


the pursuit of happiness

by orgiastique



Series: love is merely a madness [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Family Loss, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Homophobia, Husbands, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Married Life, Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, Misogyny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25897027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orgiastique/pseuds/orgiastique
Summary: Felix and Sylvain get married and work on things.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: love is merely a madness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881709
Comments: 93
Kudos: 172
Collections: Sylvix Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>   * full acknowledgements powerpoint at the end, but i'd just like to give a huge shout-out to [birdsandivory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsandivory/pseuds/birdsandivory) and [quietgal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietgal/pseuds/quietgal) for their emotional support and technical expertise, without which this fic would be 50k of _these are certainly all words_.
>   * this was my first big bang, and i could not have asked for a more amazing partner than the tremendously talented [@pillowboat](https://twitter.com/pillowboat). thank you for being the bestest ♥
>   * check out jade's GORGEOUS art [here](https://twitter.com/pillowboat/status/1294476931543359488) & give her lots of love!!!!!!!
>   * there is a prequel in the same universe which you can find [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22987849/chapters/54957520), but it's by no means a prerequisite for following this fic.
> 

> 
> hope you enjoy the journey! ♥

_What power has love but forgiveness?  
In other words  
by its intervention  
what has been done  
can be undone.  
What good is it otherwise?_

― William Carlos Williams

In the drop from high summer, autumn sways with a dizzying sense of nostalgia. Trees drip with sun. Full-cheeked apples ripen, and the air is cider-crisp. The sugarplum sky is chock-full of spiny creatures grounded by threads surely too tenuous to leash their celestial ambitions.

It is Kite-Flyer's Day at Garreg Mach Monastery.

At the center of a frolicking crowd gathered beneath their leashed skybirds, there are two. One wears the smile of a toothpaste advert. A happy sort of fella, maybe. The brightest part of him is his hair, a true combustible under the sun of broad day. It is twilight now, by the way, and his name is Sylvain. It means _wood_ or _forest_. Indeed, he is a mighty tree of a man next to his new husband, whose name is Felix (and that's as close as anyone has ever come to saying "felicitous" in association with his person). Felix is petite but sharp, with angles that cut right through to the heart of you. The wind upsweeps his hair in a carnival of ribbons, capering riotously for want of the stars.

In Sylvain's eyes, he is the truly bright one.

"What do you do with this?" Felix examines the kite Byleth left behind, holding it out in front of his chest like a shield. It's nothing special, just yellow polyester stretched over a flimsy wooden cross.

"You've never flown a kite before?" Sylvain asks.

Felix shrugs. "Fighter jets fly low around Areadbhar."

(Areadbhar, home to the largest military academy in Faerghus. It's the place where Felix grew his thorns.)

"Huh," Sylvain considers. "Well, not so much a concern around here. You just hold on tight to the spool and try not to let go. It's like walking a dog, but you have to keep running from it."

"Then it's like getting chased by a dog."

Sylvain laughs, a sound that catches momentum when Felix smiles back, his flame-amber eyes twin torches in the near-darkness. Sylvain reaches for his face, thumb tracing the dotted line of moles that cut diagonally across his cheekbone. He presses a kiss to his lips. They're thin lips, but soft, and they open for him with a moist murmur. He is privy to the secrets of Felix's softness, and now those secrets are all his to protect, too.

(His appetite for happiness is growing voracious, he knows. Greedy, too greedy.)

Felix starts off in a brisk walk, faith suspended until air gathers under the billows of his golden shield. Sylvain follows closely behind, ramping up to a jog when Felix does. The ring that he wears around his neck bounces against his sternum like a heartbeat.

"Come on. Gotta keep running, right?" Felix calls out to him, reaching back for his hand. He finds Sylvain's left hand, the one not holding the camera, and yanks at it.

Suddenly, they're stumbling forth with the graceless abandon of outlaws, fallen berries crunching beneath their feet, a parachute flung wide open on their backs. The sound of their laughter rises like a daydream.

And even if that's all this amounts to—a fancy, an apparition, a love-hungry fiction—Sylvain would surely take it, enshrine it, vow himself to it over and over, till the clock strikes midnight and the fairytale fades.

* * *

**_Four months ago_ **

The pink-paneled townhouse that they moved into earlier that spring sits on a quiet, residential street a mile from the sea. It's an ancient little thing, twice as tall as it is wide, with drafty windows that rattle ominously on stormy nights and bathroom tiles checkered in cream and teal green. Wildflowers tilt in a permanent breeze on the wallpaper of the two bedrooms.

But at least its dilapidation makes it sufficiently cheap to rent, and there's a place under the carport for Sylvain's five-year-old Ferrari Testarossa (the last gift he ever accepted from his parents). The veranda wraps around the house like an eggshell-colored scarf. It extends from the front steps to the backyard, where an overgrown field of weeds is currently living it up in the heat of summer.

Spring quarter had escaped Felix in an uproar of orientation events, informational seminars, and classwork. It's not until Blue Sea Moon rounds the corner that he finally signs off on Sylvain's housewarming party proposal: a backyard grill-out.

When he gets home from his first day of lab rotations, he finds Sylvain crab-walking along the crooked wooden fence of their backyard, tugging at small clumps of dandelions. His shock of red hair glows under the mid-afternoon sun like he's caught fire. Sweat soaks through the worn material of his grey t-shirt, making the freckled back of his neck glisten enticingly.

Felix bites his lip and tilts his head against the frame of the open sliding glass door.

Ever sensitive to the weight of unabashed leering, Sylvain turns, at first squinting against the spokes of sunlight before his eyes adjust. He rises to his feet and opens his arms to the yard. "Whaddaya think? Looking good, right?"

The yard looks nice, it really does, but how is Felix meant to care about anything but the tight tug of cotton across his boyfriend's chest and the little tease of hair revealed at his stomach? Felix crosses his arms; it's more an act of self-restraint than nonchalance.

"You've been working hard," he remarks, then drops his lashes down over his eyes. "Come take a break."

Sylvain's expression shifts knowingly. He peels off his garden gloves, tossing them in the grass. It takes only a few strides of his long legs for him to reach Felix, and then he's right _there_ , putting his stupidly charming smirk in Felix's face, encircling his waist with his thick arms, tempting Felix's senses with a heady mixture of sweat and spice and sun.

"Oh pretty, are you inviting the handsome stranger in for a glass of lemonade?"

"No." Felix sticks out his chin. "I'm inviting my boyfriend to rail me against our patio door."

Sylvain chuckles, low and breathy. Hands meandering down past the dip of Felix's spine, he whispers:

"At your service."

* * *

The after-effects of the services received linger into the next day. Felix is pleasantly achy in the hips and thighs as he stands around the barbeque, shoveling sizzling meats into his mouth with Dollar Store plasticware. He’s only half-listening to Lysithea and Linhardt debate the merits of the two- versus three-domain tree of life models.

Though the grill-out was Sylvain's idea, the guestlist is composed entirely of Felix's first-year grad cohort and their significant others. The Biochemistry program at the Derdriu Institute of Technology is an intimate little thing under the much vaster Biological Sciences Division umbrella; in Felix's year, there's only six of them. They make for entertaining company, though, and the afternoon passes by in a blur of sticky ribs, corn on the cob, and other foods designed to be consumed with one's bare hands like a ravenous animal.

After the food's been mostly tucked away and everyone's lazing around shooting the shit, Felix finds himself fidgeting. He has half an eye tracking Sylvain as he moves through the crowd.

Sylvain carries an easy friendliness with strangers that Felix can never hope—and does not hope—to emulate. He casually drops a piece of flattery here, a dorky joke there. The longest he lingers next to any single person is when he starts talking to some girl with long pigtails inside the house. Felix doesn't know how he managed to miss her introduction when she's more bubblegum pink than anything else. But whatever.

After she flits away to pick at the remnants of the cooler, Felix takes her place next to Sylvain in front of Wonder Wall. Wonder Wall's more common name is "the right side of their foyer." Felix is fairly certain Sylvain decided on the name just to live the meme of tossing out a casual "Anyway, here's Wonder Wall" at the end of the house tour.

Picture frames of varying dimensions and construction are Tetrised together in an artful spread across the space. There's no logical chronology to the way the pictures are arranged because Sylvain likes to play favorites. The first picture that he ever took of Felix in college, where they met as roommates, takes center stage. Seeing himself at his peak tired-and-greasy be featured like this is mortifying, of course, but as much as Felix bitches and grumbles about it, he makes no true motion to dethrone the memory.

Maybe—and mind you, Felix has been far less vocal on this matter—it's because the physical evidence of every moment on this wall brings him comfort. To be able to stand here on nights when sleep eludes him and see their five years through Sylvain's eyes; to know that no matter what has wracked the past, and no matter what the future forebodes, he has this.

He has Sylvain, who always places him first.

He has Sylvain, who spots him, smiles, then reaches for him.

"Hey, how're you holding up?" he asks, putting a hand on Felix's hip.

Felix pats his belly. "Full."

" _Finally_ ," Sylvain intones, with eyes that betray his fondness. "Knew we needed that fourth cow."

"That, and Ingrid's not here."

Sylvain sighs dramatically. "They say it takes a village to raise a child, but you two must have grown up on cattle ranches, lest you eat a humble farmer out of house and home."

Felix snorts, leaning back against the window across from Wonder Wall. "So, who was the unwilling victim you subjected to the chronicles?" He gestures with his chin at the pictures.

"Oh, Hilda?" At the blank look on Felix's face, Sylvain adds, "Marianne's wife, remember?"

"Sure," says Felix, to whom it is news that Marianne is even married.

"You totally tuned out all the introductions, didn't you," Sylvain teases, poking a finger into Felix's cheek.

Felix bats it away like he would an over-persistent gnat, and Sylvain retreats, laughing.

Though they're in partial view of the patio door, the crevice they occupy under the stairs lends a certain sense of privacy. The small window behind Felix is propped open, and he peers idly through it at the wild grasses swaying in the gentle summer breeze. He lets his eyelids flutter shut for a moment, taking reprieve from all the socializing and relishing the solid warmth of all the places he and Sylvain are touching.

"Hilda offered me a job," Sylvain says, breezy as the weather.

Felix jerks upright, momentarily whiplashed by the sudden news. "What? Just now? In the thirty minutes you guys were talking?"

Sylvain's right eyebrow quirks up. "How long were you watching us?" And there he is laughing again, that stupid smug bastard, when Felix huffs and flushes red all the way up to his hairline. (It's erythromania. He can't help it.) "It's just a temp thing for now, but she said there'd be the opportunity to stay on full-time if we both feel that the fit is right."

"What's the job?"

"Wedding photos. Hilda manages some fancy venue up near Edmund. It's one of those full-service places that keeps an in-house photographer on board, I guess. They were trying to get someone new after their old guy quit, but the one they decided on bailed, so."

"So…what? You guys just had an impromptu interview right in our entryway?"

"I mean"—Sylvain gestures to Wonder Wall—"my portfolio is conveniently on display here."

"You didn't even show her your _real_ stuff?"

"Our vacay pics are totally real photography! Besides, it's closer in spirit to the job than suggestive shots of bikini models."

Felix grimaces. He appreciates how much Sylvain had to sacrifice to follow him here to Derdriu, but he can't feel _too_ guilty about Sylvain leaving his day job at Garreg Mach. Not only did it drive Felix insane thinking about all the boobs his boyfriend had to make look full and juicy every day, but it was worse knowing that the job brought Sylvain no joy or pride either.

But then again, did bridal photography?

"I'm open to it," Sylvain replies.

"What does _that_ mean?"

"It means that I want to have a real _job_. I came here to support you, Fe."

It always catches Felix a little off-guard, the way the nickname leaves Sylvain's lips in a soft, breathless sigh, like _sway_ , or _bouquet_ , or _ballet_. It's far too easy to get distracted, just listening to Sylvain say his name.

Felix crosses his arms over his chest. "I wasn't aware that I needed a sugar daddy."

"Don't knock it till you try it, baby," Sylvain retorts with a wink, and cackles when Felix elbows him in the side. He sweeps back Felix's bangs with his fingers and presses a kiss to the soft baby hairs at his exposed hairline. "You know that's not what I mean. Let me feel useful to you? I've never been anyone's rock, but I want to be yours."

Felix's heart does a funny little skip. He returns Sylvain's kiss to the stubble-fuzzed line of his jaw.

"Of course you're mine," he murmurs, deciding not for the first time that, no matter how impressive Sylvain's public face might be, he'll always prefer the private one that shines just for him.

* * *

After the party, they're putting away the last of the leftovers when Felix finds his boyfriend flirting with a pretty young thing.

The creature has long black hair and round green eyes that glow in the dark. Sitting up on its hind legs with its front paws lifted to its chest, it pleads oh-so-sweetly for the strip of meat Sylvain dangles over its head.

Felix rolls his eyes. "If you feed that thing, we'll never get rid of it."

Sylvain pouts, then stage-whispers to the cat, "You hear that? He said!"

The cat mewls pitifully up at Sylvain in response, tilting its head.

Giving no care, Felix turns to walk back into the house to return the aluminum foil. Back in the boonies where he grew up, there were gaggles of strays everywhere, and you'd easily end up with a full-on zoo in your backyard if you so much as dropped a bacon crumb next to one.

He's just about to cross through the patio door when he hears Sylvain cooing quietly, "That good, baby?"

When Felix whips around on his heel, he catches Sylvain in the act of petting the damn cat who's feasting like a king on the leftover meat. Inexplicably, though, the first thought that enters his head is, _Hey, that's your petname for_ me.

He would sooner set himself on fire than give voice to that protest.

"We are _not_ keeping that," he says instead.

The cat wipes its smug face with a paw, knowing otherwise.

* * *

The damn cat stays, and the name Baby sticks.

Honestly, the worst part of it all might just be that sometimes when Sylvain calls out for "Bae" Felix will turn toward him on instinct, thinking he's said "Fe" in that stupid way he does. Sylvain assures him that it's _adorable_ to see his two black cats in sync, but that only fuels Felix's burning desire to escape the country and change his identity.

It's not that he hates Baby. The thing has a fluffy feather-duster tail and one white-socked foot with pink toes, for fuck's sake. She's freakishly cute. Though, on the other hand, she monopolizes Sylvain's lap space during the day and paws on every goddamn noise-making object around the house at night, so maybe that offsets things a little.

("Is that a xylophone? Do we _have_ a xylophone?" Felix grumbles into the back of Sylvain's neck. It is four-fucking-thirty AM.

"If you listen _reeaaaaal_ close, I think it might be 'Who Let the Dogs Out'? The cats version, of course.")

Even in the rare event that Felix catches his boyfriend without a purring black fur ball nestled in his lap, she'll somehow know when her territory has been infringed on by enemy forces.

She airdrops out of nowhere onto Felix's back and starts to knead her claws into his spine. Felix yelps, jerking back from where he'd been luxuriating in the sinful bliss of Sylvain's lips and the lazy roll of their hips.

"It _knows_ ," he tells Sylvain, who reaches around him to give Baby a little tickle under the chin.

"Not it, sweetheart— _she._ "

Baby purrs in agreement.

Felix sputters. "Team up on me, why don't you!"

"Aww, you know I love you best, Fe," Sylvain soothes, making kissy faces up at him.

"You're still touching _her_."

"Now, now, the Goddess gave man two hands: one to scritch his cat and the other to please his lover."

Felix angles an unimpressed look at him. "Your _lover_ is displeased right now. You gonna do something about that?"

_Challenge extended._

Sylvain's grin grows.

_Challenge accepted._

* * *

Felix is basking in the afterglow, waiting for Sylvain to come back from the shower, when The Production begins.

Every night before he slips into bed next to Felix, Sylvain carries Baby up to their bedroom only for her to waltz right back out. And he just _lets_ her, like he isn't at all fazed by this. Soon after lights-out, she'll come strolling back through the door he leaves cracked open for her, hop up into bed, and lay herself out over 95% of his pillow. As if this had been the plan all along, Sylvain just places his hand over her exposed belly and leaves it there.

"Why the hell do you do that?" Felix grouches.

"Her purring helps me sleep."

"No, I mean why do you bother ushering her into the room if you know she's just going to leave again and come back?"

Sylvain shuffles backwards into Felix's chest, wiggling until Felix gets the hint that he wants Felix's arm around him. Felix acquiesces, anchoring Sylvain against him with a hand over his chest, gently groping a boob.

"Well," Sylvain replies, "how's she supposed to know to come back if you don't remind her you want her here in the first place?"

It's then that Felix realizes this must be why Sylvain has won the heart of this wild creature with such ease: he's had years of experience in taming spurious creatures that are slow to trust and fast to flee.

The next morning, Felix is up and out of bed before Sylvain's even awake as usual. He walks down to the kitchen with Baby at his ankle. She sings her good mornings but keeps her distance, waiting for his move.

Hesitantly, he heads toward her food station and kneels to grab one of the wet food cans. As he empties its contents into her food dish, he mumbles to himself, "I guess there's enough of that giant orange thing for two to share."

For several moments, he simply watches as she digs into her mushy meal with gusto. Tentatively, he tickles his fingers under her pink princess collar the way he's seen Sylvain do. When she arches up to rub her clipped ear into his palm, he makes sure his face is _not_ revealing any signs of besottedness without his permission.

It's much harder than he imagined. Dammit.

"Just remember, though," he tells her quietly, "that he loved me first."


	2. Chapter 2

Fall quarter is taxing for two reasons:

  1. Felix has three 90-minute lectures a week on molecular biology.
  2. Actual taxes. Filing _fucking. taxes._ on his grad stipend.



He's doing his damndest to contain his outrage over the latter as he grins and bears the former. "Grinning" may very well be codeword for "grinding his teeth as he tries to unscramble the foreign language of biology in his analytical chemist brain." The effort is further frustrated by Professor Amis's thick Duscur accent, with its rolled _r_ 's and hard stresses on the final syllable.

Fleetingly, his mind escapes the classroom to wonder about Dedue and Dimitri. The last he'd heard, Dedue had moved back home to Duscur, and Dimitri—who oh-so- _dutifully_ joined the military as a commissioned officer after leaving GMU—submitted a transfer request to aid with the so-called "restoration efforts" in Duscur.

The war ended eight years ago.

But then again, war never really ends, does it?

Professor Amis's voice pulls his head back to the crystal structure of RNA polymerase projected at the front of the room. "That is all the time we have today. I hope that you will revise the remainder of the slides on your own. In light of the upcoming midterm, it may do you well to understand the different classes of topoisomerases."

With no lack of dread for yet another long night ahead, Felix slams his laptop shut and stuffs it into his shoulder bag. He stands to hightail on out of the room, but Marianne's sidearm desk—the type that's more of a glorified wooden paddle than a real writing surface—is obstructing his path.

"You going to that tax seminar thing?" he asks.

"Ah, no." Marianne folds her desk away to let him through first, so that she can take her time packing away her pens and notebook.

"You already know how it works?"

Felix wouldn't have pinned Marianne for the financially savvy type but then again, he really knows only two things about her: 1) that she's in the equestrian club, and 2) that her Pepto-Bismol-colored wife is now officially his boyfriend's boss.

"No, not at all, but...Hilda takes care of it for us, so I don't bother," Marianne explains.

"She files your taxes?"

"We file jointly…?"

"Oh. Right." Felix peers down at her left hand. She wears two rings on her fourth finger: there's one that's just a simple platinum band and another with custom-cut emeralds arranged in the shape of a four-leaf clover.

"Is…something the matter?"

Felix startles, feeling a blush fill to his hairline when he realizes he's just been hovering over her, silent and uncomfortably close. He has three false starts before stuttering out a "That's a nice ring" at her.

"Ah, thank you." She looks down at it, smiling softly. "Hilda's older brother is a jewelry designer, so she asked him to make our engagement rings."

Felix wonders if Hilda's brother is as pink as she is. He wonders if Marianne gets along with her brother-in-law. He wonders if Glenn would've approved of Sylvain or threatened him with the fact that he can twist a man twice his size into a human pretzel. (Or both.)

He wonders if Glenn would have helped Felix pick out a ring to propose with.

Felix shoves the thought aside. Why wouldn't he just take Annette? Stupid.

"It's nice," he repeats.

It's late by the time the tax seminar adjourns. Felix leaves feeling more aggravated than informed, but all of the tension flees him for a brief moment when he pushes out through the thick glass doors of the building.

He sees Sylvain, posed like a sexy fucking car model against the side of the firebrick Testarossa they drove halfway across Fódlan. Sylvain gives him a small wave, as if Felix has never needed such a thing to spot him in a crowd. Besides, he's near impossible to miss double-parked next to the most obnoxious custom-built Bentley with rose gold rims.

Felix feels his blood roll to a boil again. Who in fucking Sothis's name was getting paid enough in academia to afford that kind of extravagance?

"I hope whoever drives that Bentley chokes on the gold dust in their cereal," Felix spits, yanking open the passenger side door and throwing himself into the car like a big sack of rice.

Sylvain bends down with one arm draped over the open door. "Nice to see you, too, my sweet," he croons.

Felix huffs, narrowing his eyes. He knows he's being a child, _whatever_ , it's fine.

He doesn't have to take it out on his boyfriend.

Hooking an arm around Sylvain's neck, he pulls him in for a quick peck on the lips, then deflates against the leather seat. "Sorry," he grumbles. "It's been a long day. Thanks for coming to get me."

"Of course. I figured as much when you texted earlier." Sylvain shoots him a quick smile before straightening and rounding the front of the car to the driver's side.

The day feels like it's gone on forever, but in truth, the sky is only now beginning to turn indigo. It's neither very late nor dark, and even if it were, Felix could certainly make it home without warranting a pick-up in _this_ neighborhood with his skill for self-defense. Precisely for those reasons, though, the fact that Sylvain comes around anyway—just to see Felix a few minutes earlier, just because he _wants_ to—makes Felix's heart feel a little too swollen for his chest.

They pull away from the Bentley and ramp up to a slow cruise along the narrow streets of the university campus. A broad hand finds its way to Felix's thigh. This must be what it's like to have a safety blanket, he thinks, as he curls his own fingers around the hand. He strokes his palm over the wooly strawberry-blond curls there, finding peace in the familiarity of the texture, the warmth, the weight of it. He stares out the window at the tree-lined neighborhood streets near their house and languidly traces the topography of the winding veins and raised calluses he's memorized by heart.

The car radio hums quietly of a classic rock station Sylvain likes, and that, too, is a comfort.

"So?" Sylvain peeks at Felix out of the corner of his eye. "You wanna talk about this day of yours?"

Felix sighs but finds the breath lighter than he'd expected. "Why can't Fódlan collectively agree to mail everyone a postcard of their yearly balance with the government? They do that in Dagda."

"And make people's life _easy_? Put all those poor CPAs out of work? Don't be ridiculous now, darling."

"Ugh." Felix scowls. "I don't even want to know how much your family pays their CPA."

"Oh, don't worry, I couldn't even tell you," Sylvain chirps. "I think my parents have more than one!"

Felix takes pause here to study the tight corners of Sylvain's eyes that belie his affected cheer. "How are things with them, by the way?"

"They went on a cruise around Sreng recently. Whale-watching," Sylvain says, which means nothing at all except that he has no plans to crack the vacuum seal on his jar of repressed feelings today.

Felix interlaces their fingers together and gives his hand a squeeze. They don't say anything more in the car.

When they get home, Baby is right at their ankles, demanding dinner service from her faithful servants. Felix dumps his bag off by the stairs and heads into the kitchen to scoop out some kibble for Her Royal Pushiness, while Sylvain splits off to warm up some human food for the both of them that he must have thrown together between getting home from work and leaving to pick up Felix. It's 6:22PM.

At 11:45PM, Felix decides to call it a night. He's worked through the rest of Professor Amis's lecture and made enough progress on problem sets to justify sleep.

They've converted the second bedroom on the third floor of the house into a study, and the room goes comfortingly fuzzy around the edges when he pulls off his glasses. He lays them over the closed lid of his laptop and groans when he stretches his arms over his head. It sounds like there's pop rocks lodged between every one of his joints. He tries to recall the last time he stretched properly. Or swung his sword. He thinks about finding a new dojo here in Derdriu every time he oils his blade, but there are never enough hours in the day.

Baby is already rumbling away like an old car engine on Sylvain's pillow when Felix makes it down to the master bedroom. Sylvain is standing in front of the dresser they share, rummaging through it for a shirt, probably. The only thing he's got on are a pair of loose boxer shorts clinging to his hips for dear life.

Felix pads up to him from behind, touching his shoulder in a gentle warning before plastering himself fully against the naked expanse of his back. Felix knows the map of scars there better than any other geography, and it's everything he wants to protect in his arms.

Burrowing his face into the curve of Sylvain's neck, Felix takes a long drag of his fresh scent. He feels Sylvain's fingertips slide into his hair, massaging his scalp. Felix does not _purr_ —because, what the hell—but if he's humming some soft sound of contentment, then that's just that.

"I think you're so jealous of Baby because you're really the same," Sylvain says.

"You have never been more wrong." Felix nuzzles his neck more insistently; it's an act of defiance against the very incorrect thing he just said, not because he wants to take shelter under his skin.

"Yeah…" Sylvain hums. "She does have cuter toesies."

Felix is too tired to check the loose bubble of laughter that rises to his lips. "What in Goddess's name are _toesies._ "

Spinning around in Felix's arms, Sylvain flips their position such that Felix is the one crowded up against the dresser. Sylvain's minty breath spreads warm over his cheeks. He wiggles his toes against Felix's pointedly. "Toesies."

"I see," Felix says, deciding to play along. "Then what about these?"

Sylvain brings the fingers Felix waves at him to his lips and brushes a reverent kiss over every knuckle. "Fingerlings."

"This?"

"Cheekpeas." A peck to either cheek.

"Here?"

Sylvain makes a show of considering the question. When he settles on an answer, a pirate's smile hooks around the corners of his mouth, and just like that Felix finds himself captive in the grand argosy of Sylvain's arms, looted of breath.

"Mine," Sylvain replies, then stakes his claim.

Their mouths move together in a leisurely exploration, lazy as cats under the midday sun. When Sylvain's hand goes to cradle Felix's head, Felix tips back into it, letting his lips fall open. He breathes out a low moan when Sylvain nibbles at his lower lip, then soothes over it with his tongue. The skin around Sylvain's mouth is rough with stubble, and Felix likes the way it rubs his face pink and raw when they're tasting each other like this.

When Sylvain tries to pull back, Felix chases the sweet pleasure of him. He laps at the smile that breaks out over his lips. The breathless way he whispers _I love you_ feels like more than just desire, and the affirmation that tumbles from Felix's mouth is pure instinct.

All his life, it's never been obvious to Felix that he could have something like this. The steadfast devotion, the gentle affection, a need so fierce that it borders on madness.

When he'd first met Sylvain, it was enough just to escape the ghosts of everyone who's abandoned and betrayed him. But now, there's so much more that he wants. He wants and wants and wants, but most of all he wants _this_ , forever and always.

It strikes Felix that there is, in fact, a word for that.

"Should we get married?"

Sylvain's eyes blow wide open, the heat and hope of his gaze pulsing like a raw heart in Felix's bare hands. "Oh."

Felix is painfully aware of his own shortcomings when it comes to tenderness. He's got a mean streak and a short temper and even shittier chances of being nurturing than a black widow spider—but if there's just one thing he wants to get right, it is to treat this heavy, glowing thing with kindness.

"I want to make promises to you," Felix says, heedless of the flush spreading over his neck and ears. "Though, either way, I'll probably still love you when you're bald and unlovable."

Sylvain breathes out a shaky laugh, his fingers latching firmly onto Felix's hips. "You know, given my family history, that might not be as far into the future as you think."

"Sounds like you better shake on this deal before the toupee-shopping starts, huh," Felix says.

"I will never wear a toupee, not even for you," Sylvain informs him. He takes Felix's hand, the left one this time, and folds a kiss to the palm of it, then to the skin where their promise would rest. He loops his own pinky around Felix's and holds them there, clasped together. "But anything else you want, you just point your finger, and I will be your sword and shield and fire-breathing dragon."

Felix laughs as Sylvain mimes spewing flames over the stronghold of their dresser. "You'd be the first to die in battle, stupid." He punches their hands to Sylvain's chest. "I don't need you to do all that. I just want you to be you."

* * *

It's not like they've never talked about it.

For most of Felix's life—even back when his mom was still around, back before Glenn left for Duscur—marriage was this nebulous thing that people did, but _over there_ , with people who were not him. He could no better understand the way that people talked about getting married like it was a forgone fate than he could explain his own queasiness at the thought of finding a nice girl and letting a certificate from the county office paper-maché their lives together.

So, he focused on things that made sense. Swords. Training. Not science at first, but eventually, science.

Boys, too, began to make sense.

Boys, and their hard muscles and square knuckles and throaty chuckles that tremored through his body like miniature earthquakes. When he was in high school, he thought to expand his martial arts repertoire by trying out judo. He spent the night after his first practice lying awake in bed with underwear pushed down to his thighs, recalling the press of his judo partner's lean bulk over his own body.

So that was that. No more wondering why an institution meant to join men and women—ugh—in holy— _ugh_ —matrimony lacked appeal to him. At one point in Fódlan history, marriage had been afforded to all, but those days were no more and unlikely to return.

…Until, like a tidal wave, legalization of same-sex marriage swept across Fódlan—first in Adrestia, then in Leicester, and finally, by a narrow margin, in Faerghus too—shaking the very foundations of the common sense that Felix grew up with.

That wasn't the only thing falling apart, though.

War raged on in Duscur.

A sudden deployment.

A closed casket funeral.

An inextinguishable fury in place of grief.

Felix was alone, and no closer to a future in which he could be someone to anyone. After all, how could he possibly expect such a thing when the people who shared his very blood never chose him first?

The fact that Sylvain did was as much a miracle as it was a mystery. Felix had spent the first months of their relationship waiting for the punchline. It felt like an outright lie that Sylvain would genuinely love everything about him, even the parts of Felix that _Felix_ found grating.

But according to Sylvain, who brushes his fringe away from his face as if needing to see him for exactly who he is: "The way I feel about you is not a temporary thing. I don't have to like all of you to love all of you."

So, there was _that_.

The winter after Sylvain (finally) graduated from GMU, Felix brought him up to Areadbhar for Saint Seiros Day. Though they were on speaking terms again, Felix still had only a tenuous relationship with his father at best, and the trip was an olive branch of sorts. He hadn't expected for Sylvain to get so fucked up about it. The drive up from Garreg Mach took about four loops of Mariah Carey's Greatest Hits album. Sylvain spent the entire drive singing along and missing all the glory notes.

Dinner went as well as it could have. Afterwards, when they were alone again, Sylvain let out a long breath. The white steam of his tea blew over the cleared dining table in smoky tendrils. Sitting to his right, Felix watched him absently trace the golden seam of his teacup with a finger.

Just when Felix opened his mouth to ask if he was okay, Sylvain raised the teacup, almost like a toast. "Your old man collect these?"

Felix shook his head. "Mom brought them with her when she moved here with him."

"Oh, your parents didn't meet in Faerghus?"

"He was stationed in Dagda for a year back when he first enlisted. If you do the math, they must've gotten pregnant while he was out there." Felix grimaced, turning his own teacup round and round in his hand. "She probably never really wanted to leave there. Her favorite things were everything she brought from home."

Sylvain hummed softly, sympathetic. "I'm surprised she didn't take these back with her, then." The cup looked almost toy-like in his large hands as he held it up to the light. "Looks like they're one of a kind."

"She said they belonged to some Dagdan emperor's concubine," Felix said. "After losing her only son, the woman smashed her favorite tea set in a fit of rage, then regretted it like hell afterwards. When the emperor found out what happened, he commissioned for the set to be repaired with the instruction that it should be made more beautiful for having once been broken. Thought it'd get his pretty plaything to cheer up, I guess."

He was surprised by how quickly the story had come back to him. It'd been almost decades since he last heard it told.

"Kintsukuroi, it's called," he added, lifting his cup for a sip. He almost spat the tea back out when he glanced over at Sylvain. "Goddess, stop making that face. The story's probably not even real, and you look dumb getting sentimental over it."

"It's a nice thought," Sylvain said quietly, still making the stupid face, "to be lacquered up along the cracks and reborn as something golden and glowing."

"There are people who'd help you do that, you know." Felix placed a hand on Sylvain's thigh, and Sylvain laid his own hand over top.

His lips tilted in a lopsided smile. "My _gorgeous_ therapist, for one. Goddess bless the good man."

Felix rolled his eyes, withholding comment on the unsubtle dodge. "Should've known you'd be the type to fall in love with your therapist."

"Aww, you know you're my number one guy, Fe!" Felix jerked quickly out of the path of the prodding finger headed for his cheek. He scowled while Sylvain laughed. "I'm very much set on you, in case you can't tell."

"Are you, now," Felix intoned.

"I thought your dad was going to make me stand in the backyard with an apple over my head as he took shots at me, and I came anyway." He accompanied this with a theatrical sigh. "I was prepared to be on the news."

"Sounds like a hate crime."

"It wouldn't have to be a _gay_ thing. Parents don't tend to like me because of me."

 _It's because they can tell just by looking at your obscene mouth all the debauchery you're committing on their child_ , Felix thought, eyes flicking down to those bright red lips. Stupid cherry Chapstick. He willed himself to look away. "You did just fine. _You_ "—he jabbed a finger to his chest—"are not a bad person."

Sylvain wouldn't believe him; Felix was well aware of that. Even after all this time and all the therapy, there were things that changed and others that didn't. But Felix had to say it anyway, and he would keep insisting on it until the day Sylvain could finally see it for himself.

"Your dad isn't either, you know," Sylvain replied, another verbal sidestep. He reached for the teapot, refilling Felix's cup, then his own. "I know things still aren't easy between you two, and I don't know him as well as you do, obviously, but I just feel like he'd—I don't know—be the type of parent who'd stand by you on your wedding day no matter who you were marrying, you know? He might not even be a big fan of the guy, but he'd be there." He paused mid-pour and began to back-pedal: "Purely hypothetical situation, of course. Not saying that it'd be me he's theoretically disapproving of on your wed—"

"Why wouldn't it be you?"

Sylvain put down the teapot. "Are you saying you would marry me?"

Felix felt the dry knob of his throat catch when he swallowed. He looked away. "I'm only _twenty_. Just the other day I found out that Segway? The one that's spelled like you say it? That's only the scooter. The transition type of segue has this bullshit other spelling that gives _bologna_ run for its money—"

A loose, bright spell of laughter shook out of Sylvain. "You are so cute, you know that?"

The fondness embedded in every crinkle on his face made it an uphill battle to muster up any real irritation at his teasing. He was laughing a little _too_ hard, though, so Felix had to at least try: "Asshole. You ruined it; I'm done talking to you."

Delighted chortles calming to the occasional chuckle, Sylvain nodded placatingly. "Yes, dear," he sang. "Before we _segue_ to the next topic, though..."

" _Hey_."

"—It's a yes for me."

A beat.

"Whenever you're ready," Sylvain said, all light and breezy, but Felix didn't miss the nervous set of his shoulders. "We can even meet in the middle of the aisle to make it fair. Or hell, just text me when to meet you at the courthouse, and I'll be there."

Felix felt a small smile wiggle its way through the cracks between his lips like a sprightly weed. The life force of it was unstoppable.

But Sylvain's eyes were cast to one side, like he was afraid to see Felix's reaction, and he'd started in on twittery hand-waving now: "Though, I don't think they let you read your own vows at the courthouse, which would be a bummer. And Annette and Mercie might never forgive us for it. You know His Highness would be disappointed, too, but in that distinctly polite way of his—"

Felix silenced his rambling with a kiss. He felt the ball of Sylvain's nerves unravel as he went soft in Felix's arms, and Felix was right there to gather up all his fluffy-gentle bits.

"I'll let you know," Felix whispered into his mouth, not wanting to pull back quite yet. He was far from done with him. "When I'm ready, you'll be the first to know."

* * *

"I see."

Felix fidgets in his seat, cursing the sleek, contemporary furniture that decorates the front lobby of the Gloucester Center for Integrative Science. Apparently, being the product of a 100-million-dollar endowment by the biggest pharmaceutical company in Fódlan means not having normal chairs. Eight weeks into his rotation and Felix still could not for the life of him figure out how to settle down comfortably in this hexagonal framed contraption. At least, he already decided that he isn't going to join the lab he's rotating in, so maybe he won't have to suffer more than four years of sore ass.

He shifts the phone to his other ear. "Yeah. So that's what's happening."

"I see," Rodrigue says again. For a moment, Felix thinks that his father is going to demand _why_ —why this man, why so young, why did you choose the civilian life, Felix?—but Rodrigue's voice cuts through the line before Felix starts preemptively sharpening his swords for battle. "Do you need next-day shipping?"

It isn't until the air leaves him all at once that Felix realizes he's been holding his breath. "Yeah, that'd be good. I'll pay you back."

"No need. I'll text you the tracking information when I send it out." Rodrigue clears his throat. "Is there going to be a ceremony?"

"We haven't talked about it yet."

"Well, there's some money for you, if that's what you decide to do. It's not much, probably not enough for a wedding these days especially around where you live, but it's something."

"Oh." Felix blinks. Between his mother abandoning camp and his dad's service, they never had very much in terms of savings. He wonders how much it is. He wonders how much of it was meant for Glenn. "Okay."

"It's yours anyway, even if you don't decide to make a big thing of it. Could just be some seed money for your new life. Up to you."

Felix doesn't really know what to make of this addendum. The silence over the line grows moldy green penicillin. But four years ago, he'd promised himself to at least try with his father, so he mumbles, "Thanks. If we do…make a thing of it, I'll let you know," before he says he has to go.

Around 5PM the next day, the mailman drops off a package with Rodriguer's antiquated script on the return label. Felix tears through the bubble wrap to get to the small green box it protects.

When he opens the box, a single silver-steel band that once belonged to his father's grandmother glints up at him. When she'd stepped off the boat from Dagda, her sword and the clothes on her back were the only things she owned. When she found the love of her life in this foreign land, the sword became their rings and he became her new home.

There's an envelope at the bottom of the box from Rodrigue. Inside is a check and a memo:

> _In my grandmother's time, it took a great amount of courage for a woman to propose to a man. You've always had her spirit, I think. I'm sorry if I sounded lukewarm over the phone. You know better than anyone else how to pursue your own happiness—you've convinced me of that plenty, and I'm sure you'll continue to do so in the future. If you decide to hold a ceremony, I would very much like to be there._
> 
> _Best of luck._
> 
> _P.S. Send more pictures of that cat of yours. She's a keeper & your other one is, too._

Felix tucks both the check and letter back into the envelope and picks up his phone.

> _Got the goods. Thanks, Dad._

He attaches a picture of Baby faithfully grooming Sylvain's beard and hits send.

* * *

It had come to Dimitri's attention, when Felix and Sylvain first moved to Derdriu, that they were eating their meals off of a fort of cardboard boxes with a tablecloth draped over top. He'd arranged for a proper dining table to be delivered as a housewarming gift, but by a clerical error, the pressed pinewood piece that arrived a week later was something more in the picnic table category. It was more effort than it was worth to send it back, though, and they'd had more than their share of fun laying each other out over the table and making an indoor picnic of their bodies.

Tonight is Takeout Tuesday. Sylvain had no sooner set down a bag with $18.21 worth of egg rolls and chow mein on the aforementioned table than Felix had pulled out the small square box from his pocket.

The crinkle of the paper bag is deafening in the silence that follows. Sylvain stares at the ring, then up at Felix.

Felix watches, utterly perplexed, as Sylvain backs up into the kitchen counter abutting the fridge and climbs it. He yanks open the cabinet over the fridge that no one in the history of the universe has _ever_ found a use for.

Except, apparently, for hiding the ring you hoped to propose with some day. The box is covered in dust when Sylvain pulls it down, and Felix can't help wondering how long he'd had it at the ready. Since they moved to Derdriu together? Since before that?

More importantly, why did it even come as a surprise that Sylvain had a ring?

Of course Sylvain had a ring.

"And a plan, too," Sylvain supplies.

He doesn't exactly look upset that Felix had beat him to the punch and ruined whatever grand gesture he'd been cooking up, but guilt swirls uncomfortably in the pit of Felix's stomach anyway. He glowers accusingly at the menagerie of take-out containers on the table, as if it is _their_ fault that he turns into a 12-ton steamroller when he's set his heart on something he wants. He knows he does this. He _knows._ And yet—

"Was there going to be a flash mob? Or were you going to do it on the big screen over Kirsten Field?"

"Of course not, you hate baseball," Sylvain says, a smile teasing at his lips. The soft fondness of his gaze translates into a bed of coals smoldering in the hearth of Felix's chest. "I was thinking we'd walk down to the yakitori place you like on Main, and then hit up karaoke night at Beni's after. We could get you all nice and loose with some drinks, just enough to have fun heckling the local artistes that insist on deafening us all with Aerosmith, and maybe even be talked into dancing with me under the stars at the park afterwards. You wouldn't have wanted to make a scene of it in front of strangers, so I thought I'd try my luck after we get home that night, hoping that you'd be so agreeable and full of spiced meats that you won't think too much before saying yes."

Felix would laugh if he didn't feel so heavy with exasperation stewed in affection, all rolling to a boil inside of him. "Goddess, Sylvain," he huffs, shaking his head. "What the hell. _I_ was the one who said we should get married, remember?"

"I don't think I'd recover if you said no." Sylvain's fingers clench around the box in his hand, and Felix feels an answering constriction in his own throat.

"You're unbelievable." Felix jerks his chin at the box. "You gonna put that on me or what?"

It's a skinny fit, but once the ring makes it past the middle knuckle, it slides comfortably down over the belly of Felix's ring finger. His breath catches in his throat when Sylvain's hand falls away from his, and he gets a proper look at the shiny, black band. A crackled pattern is carved over the entire outer surface of the ring and filled in with thin threads of gold. It almost looks like—

"Things reborn," Sylvain says, "and a light in the darkness. I can't help but think of them as one and the same."

It's so absurdly dramatic a thing to say that if it were anyone else, Felix would laugh right in their face. But this is Sylvain, and this ring is their bloom of fireflies, throbbing gold against a bruised evening sky; their kintsukuroi teacups, once broken but so very whole.

"Uh." Felix's silence seems to have made Sylvain nervous, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other like a bumbling giant. "I thought about getting a stone like amber, maybe, but—"

"No, it's perfect." Felix lifts his face, and he knows he's smiling but doesn't realize there's a sunshower in his eyes until Sylvain breathes, _Oh_ , and brushes a thumb over his moist lower lashes.

"You're beautiful, Fe."

Felix tries to scowl but can't seem to find the right facial muscles to do it. "Shut your mouth and give me your hand," he grumbles instead.

Sylvain gives him his mouth, then his hand. He kisses Felix like he would also give him the sun and stars and every sacred solace on this earth if that's what he wants.

In return, Felix gives him a halo of steel, solid and strong.

* * *

"Felix, pay attention!" Annette huffs, stuffing her entire face in front of the camera so that for a few brief seconds her left nostril is the star of the show. Felix takes a screenshot to send to her later.

He cannot for the life of him fathom how, between her senior year at GMU and helping Mercedes with her new cupcake catering company, Annette found the time to assemble this monstrosity of a PowerPoint with—in her words—"all the essential considerations for the perfect blue-sky wedding."

It's only been a day since he first broke the news of their engagement to Annette. Sylvain hasn't even found the time to get his ring resized after discovering that, indeed, his ring finger was two whole sizes bigger than that of Felix's great-grandmother. He's been wearing it around his neck for now. Felix keeps catching him fingering it through his shirt.

"Where were we?" Annette advances the PowerPoint to a slide titled _Lasso in Your Darling: Barnhouse Weddings_. "Oh, right! This is another great rustic choice—"

"Annie," Felix groans. "If I hear the word 'rustic' again, I'll _die_."

"The one on Half Moon Bay is cute," Sylvain says, and Annie perks up visibly, eyes sparkling.

"Isn't it?! I like that one, too!" She taps at her keyboard a couple of times to rewind the slideshow. "It'd be more DIY than some of the other choices, which might be good or bad depending on what you prefer, but _oh_ , just imagine the sunset melting over the waves as you read your vows to each other. You could put the altar at the water's edge, though we'll have to warn your bridal party and front-row seat guests about the splash zone…."

Felix's mind boggles at the scene she's painting him. What the hell is a bridal party? And who would even sit front row for them? Would Sylvain's parents even come? Would there be two empty seats on either side of his own father?

Some annoying emotion itches inside his chest. This is so much more of an _ordeal_ than he thought.

"What about—" Felix turns to Sylvain. "What about the place where you work? You said it's a one-stop shop that takes care of everything, right? Making all these decisions is such a waste of time."

"Felix, that's so rude!" Annette gasps at the same time that Sylvain says, "The next available date at The Locket is two years from now, so if you don't mind the wait…"

Felix throws Annette a grimace that says, _See? This is all just stupid_ , but Annette stands her ground. Or rather, she remains firmly seated on the high stool at Mercedes's breakfast bar, looking like she's trying to figure out how to throttle Felix through the internet.

"Although," Sylvain goes on, "even given two more years, I'm not sure we could scrounge up 50k in cash. Hilda doesn't take payment in installments."

Felix must be having an aneurysm. " _That's_ how much—"

"Anyway," Mercedes interjects, reaching around Annette with flour-dusted fingers to toggle off the screen-share. Her soft smile stretches across the full width of the screen. "No need to hit the panic button quite yet. You two have plenty of time to talk things through. I just think it's so sweet that you both had rings for each other." She motions through the camera at the fist that Felix is resting his cheek on, ring inadvertently on display. He straightens in his seat. "Kind of miraculous that neither of you had the idea to get paired rings, too."

"Well, you said this is part of a pair, right?" Sylvain digs the ring out from inside his shirt. It winks under the fluorescent kitchen lights as it dangles and sways on the chain.

"Yeah, at one point," Felix says. "But my great-grandfather insisted on getting buried with his, so short of going grave-robbing, there's no way I was going to get my hands on the pair of them."

"Oh shit, I'm twinsies with Great Grandpops Fraldarius?" Sylvain's eyebrows soar up toward his hairline. "Does that make me a Fraldarius? Because I'd totally be down for that."

Felix watches as a grin grows rampant over Sylvain's face. He bears no particular pride for the Fraldarius name, but Sylvain's eagerness to take it and claim it as his own makes him want to grab him by the shirt collar and kiss him stupid. Hand drifting up of its own accord, Felix almost does, before a loud noise from the laptop startles him from his stupor.

The snap of a screenshot.

"Oops, didn't mean to interrupt your moment there!" chirps Annette, who does not appear the least bit sheepish.

This is also conveniently when a timer goes off somewhere over in cupcake central, signaling the need for Annette and Mercedes to go cream 30 dozen cupcakes each. After tossing together some tentative plans for another video session in the near future, they all sign off.

Felix slams the laptop shut and pushes it far out of reach. He collapses head-first onto the table, the uneven grains of the wood digging into his forehead. "Why does there always have to be a _PowerPoint_."

Sylvain bends down to reach into the bag he takes to work, then nudges at Felix with a box. "A biscuit for your sorrows?"

"I'm not a dog, dammit."

"Oh, these are too fancy for your average pup," Sylvain assures him. "They're imported from _Albinea_."

This makes Felix look twice at the box of treats, with its gold lettering and fancy wrapping paper. He frowns up at Sylvain. "More gifts from clients at work?"

"Yeees…" Sylvain says, dragging out the syllable, "but not just _any_ client."

"Hm. Someone I know?"

Sylvain hums a little tune, tapping his chin coyly. "Oh, they only own the entire building you work in…"

Fucking of _course_ the Gloucesters would choose only the poshest wedding venue in all of northern Derdriu. Felix scowls. Fuck rich people.

Gleaning the sentiment from whatever face he must be making, Sylvain laughs. "Don't get too worked up wishing the millionaires of the modern world to hell and back, though. The guy who's getting married, Lorenz, is already doing half your job for you by pushing his father into an early grave with this wedding."

"How's that?" Felix asks.

"Well, he's marrying Chairman Riegan's half-Almyran grandson for one." Sylvain enumerates Lorenz's transgressions against the Count Gloucester on a finger. Felix raises his eyebrows in a _yikes_ gesture. It's near impossible to attend a single student coffee hour without getting an earful from Lysithea about increased conservatism at the Roundtable and rising tensions at the Almyran border. (It's all very heavy for cheese and grapes.)

Sylvain ticks off another finger. "And he's planning to do it in a giant lavender wedding gown for another…"

"Fuck," Felix says, huffing a laugh.

Sylvain smiles. "Makes you feel like you're going about getting married all wrong when someone goes _that_ all out, doesn't it?"

"I don't think there's a wrong way of getting married," Felix says. "That Gloucester guy might wanna put on a dress and make a day of it, but even after all this talk of weddings, I still don't see the point in having one." He looks down at the box of biscuits on the table. "My dad sent us a check when I asked him for the ring."

"…Oh?"

"But we don't need to use it to throw a party. We could save it for our future and stuff."

"How do you mean?"

"I want to go places with you," Felix says. "The kite festival this weekend. The white night parade in Morfis. That round-the-world tour you've been talking about for years. I want us to be able to just _go_. Hop on that bike you keep saying you're gonna get and take off."

"Ah…" Sylvain smirks. "Is this about your longtime fantasy of being swept away by a bad boy on the back of a huge sexy motorcycle?"

Felix rolls his eyes. "Are you sure that's not _your_ fantasy? Because I'm definitely more badass than you. I would rock your world on a motorbike, and you'll have to cling to _my_ back."

"Oooh, big words from a paper driver."

There's little room for argument there. Felix got his driver's license in high school like every other kid born in the boonies, but he hasn't driven even once since he side-swiped a BMV pulling out of a parking lot.

Nevertheless, he crosses his arms and sticks his chin out stubbornly. "Now you know why I'm locking you down. Lifetime chauffeuring services."

"And here I thought I was your kitty litter scooper."

"And live-in maid."

"And gardener boy."

"The human attached to my favorite toy."

"Yeah?" Sylvain leans in, eyes glimmering. Felix meets him for a quick peck on the lips that turns into a longer, lingering kiss when Sylvain chases him, arm coming around his waist. Felix laughs in surprise when Sylvain scoops him off the bench and repositions them both so that he's straddling the bench with Felix riding his lap. Felix can feel the _toy_ in question push up against him.

"Are you in the mood to play, pretty?" Sylvain asks.

The answer seems obvious, but he waits for Felix to give explicit confirmation anyway. When he nods, Sylvain reaches around his head to tug at the elastic of his ponytail, making the dark, silky strands tumble past Felix's shoulders. Felix shudders as Sylvain eases his fingers into his hair, gripping gently at the long threads before gathering them all to one side. He brushes his lips over the bared skin of Felix's neck, and Felix tips his head back slightly, indulging Sylvain's careful attentions over every sensitive centimeter of his throat until, eventually, impatience takes over.

"You gonna ever come back up here?" he murmurs.

"Mmm dunno, I think I might just move in here," Sylvain says. When he nibbles at Felix's pulse point, Felix gasps, hips bucking.

"Well, you know I won't be able to live with you down there, right?" he manages, grasping Sylvain's shoulders for leverage as he begins to grind against him through their clothes. He likes the quiet, breathy noises he draws out of Sylvain, who leaves a breadcrumb trail of kisses over his collarbones, then up his neck, before finding his way back to Felix's lips.

"Well, that would be a problem," Sylvain says, "since I plan to spend my life with you."

Felix chuckles into the kiss and whispers, "Good answer."

His fingers meander down to the vee of Sylvain's hips, then lower, reaching past the waistband of his shorts. There's no underwear standing in the way of what he's looking for, and soon his strokes seduce vowels of loving despair from Sylvain's lips.

" _Fe_."

His name, again and again.

Desire spreads like bodily convection through their mouths as they move over each other. The swelter of desperation rises to the surface of their skin, every brush of fingers a permanence that perseverates long after the touch is gone. The blue veins of their working hands and straining forearms are threaded like constellations, and their bodies are swollen and slick with starlight, so full of pressure that there is no other fate but to burst, bright as a solar flare.

Still, they keep touching each other.

Now, slower.

Kisses, not like the world is ending, because remember, the stars have already all imploded, and now there's just them. All the time, all the air, all the distance is theirs. No one is going anywhere. In spite of this—or maybe _because_ of this—the only thought that shores the harbor of Felix's mind is:

"I just can't stand not being married to you."

The silence rocks them as they drift, gentle, in the boat wake.

"Okay," Sylvain says.

"Okay?" Felix repeats, still out at sea.

"We can get married without all the fluff and fanfare. Just us. Right now."

Felix pulls back, blinking so rapidly his eyelids might flutter away like butterflies. "What, _now_?"

"Well, not in-the-middle-of-the-night now, but." Sylvain smiles, kissing one corner of Felix's parted lips. "I told you, right? Just text me the time, and I'll be there."

Felix bites his lip, finding it impossible to contain the grin breaking through. "You're sure that's what you want?"

"Yeah," Sylvain says. "I can't wait to be married to you either."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to @birdsandivory for letting me borrow her jewelry designer pink son ♥


	3. Chapter 3

They're in and out of the courthouse by 9:47AM, marriage certificate in hand. The whole affair takes sixteen minutes.

It wouldn't have even taken half so long had it not been for the entourage that volunteered themselves to stand witness to the event. At the Biochem cluster seminar the previous afternoon, Felix had somehow unlocked the door to nosiness when he passed Marianne his house keys so that she could check on Baby while they were gone for Garreg Mach for the weekend. Apparently, everyone had been wondering all week about the ring on his hand, and now additionally, they wanted to know all about his weekend plans.

The conversation went downhill from there.

So there he and Sylvain were that morning, kissing primly in front of their five witnesses and the court officiant who pronounced them husband and husband.

And here they are now, devouring each other more filthily in a tiny inn with paisley-patterned wallpaper just outside the city limits of Garreg Mach. The flash storm that hit them on the way into the city has passed, but the sounds that fill the bedroom are wet, wet, wet.

When Felix tastes Sylvain in his mouth, it is honeysuckle tattooed to his tongue. When Sylvain rises over him from behind, just the way Felix likes it, the cold metal of his ring necklace grazes Felix's spine in the most barely-there of touches that makes his whole body tremble with anticipation. When Sylvain finally, finally begins to fuck into him, they are mortar and pestle, a rough grind of hips that work up in tempo until the elixir is complete and spilling hot inside of him.

"You are so beautiful," Sylvain moans into the crook of his neck.

He's mumbling it again later, with Felix's cock in his pretty candy mouth, and Felix has to brace his hands against the headboard to resist shoving himself all the way down his throat.

And he's saying it yet again, after Felix's lost sense of how long Sylvain's clever fingers have teased that swollen ache inside him, easing away every time Felix's thighs tighten with the premonition of orgasm.

It's _you're so beautiful_ , and _I just want to spend forever looking at you_ and _come for me, oh won't you come so pretty for me?_

Felix doesn't know which one of those is his undoing, but none of it matters when he's tearing at the sheets and making a mess of himself.

"Fuck," he hears Sylvain groan and feels his eyes intent on him, watching as he quakes and quakes and quakes.

After it's all over, Sylvain eases out of him slowly, but nothing can prevent the hollow discomfort that comes after Sylvain leaves him. As if all too aware of this, Sylvain fills the void with more words— _I love you more than anything,_ and _you're so beautiful, darling_ , and _goddess, I want to have you again_ —and more kisses—over closed eyelids, flushed cheeks, the knob of his throat—before getting up to fumble about somewhere else in the room. He's probably looking for clean underwear and towels. Sylvain always wants to shower after sex, but he's fine with letting Felix be lazy and smelly next to him, which is the real beauty of it all.

It's barely a minute later that he climbs back in bed. He tucks Felix against his side the way that Felix likes. When Felix peeks open an eye, he sees no towels.

Sylvain hands him a card. "Since we didn't have time for self-prepared vows at the county office," he explains, "you get the paper copy."

Heart caught in his throat, Felix takes a second to study its cover—two suited silhouettes under a white arch dotted with tiny metallic fairy lights—before opening it up to read.

> _Sweetheart,_
> 
> _That was the first name I called you when I was your Trash Juice roommate with no sense of privacy. Or maybe it was_ gorgeous— _the very first time I was right about you. And how rude was I not to give name to every time I discovered your strength, your drive, your untamable spirit?_
> 
> _Forgive me, darling; you can be very intimidating at times. It's the reason I spent months doodling my heart onto index cards, certain you would see right through me otherwise._ _But I think I'm a little better at honesty now with you, in a way I never thought I could be with anyone._
> 
> _"I just want you to be you," you said, not even realizing how rare it is that any person truly loves another for who they are, instead of who they want them to be. Or at least, that's the way it's always been in my life._
> 
> _And then, there you were, seeing me properly._
> 
> _And now, here_ we _are, with our future a feast beyond the horizon._
> 
> _Our life together is everything I never knew I could have and everything I never want to live without again, and it's all because you gave me the courage to step beyond the line in the sand._
> 
> _You. Oh, how lovely you are._
> 
> _My sweetheart, my darling, my best friend. My husband._
> 
> _Thank you for being mine._
> 
> _Sylvain_

_Oh_ , Felix thinks, then, _fuck_. He feels like he should have prepared something, too, but his dick is still tingling and his mind is blank and his heart is on fire, so all he can really do at this point is reach up and kiss Sylvain over and over again because he can; because he wants to; because he needs him to know that his tender feelings are not wasted on an ill-bred thug who only knows how to swing a sword and spontaneously shout _fuck_ from one corner of the room.

"We'll frame it for Wonder Wall," Felix says, with a frayed edge to his voice that gives away the desperate, hopeless way he's in love with this man.

Sylvain twists to rest his forehead against Felix's, his broad hands cupping Felix's cheeks. No one touches Felix like Sylvain does, like he could physically hold him together.

"Maybe," he lilts, barely a whisper, "you're gonna be the one that saves me..."

Laughter rolls through Felix like a somersault in water, and they're both bubbling with it when their mouths meet again.

(In the wee hours of morning, Felix slips out from under the covers and takes the card with him to the writing desk. He reads Sylvain's loopy letters again and again. With the hotel pen, he lays down ink on the backside, right over the Papyrus logo. The card finds its way into a frame and up onto Wonder Wall, without Sylvain being any wiser to the additions.)

* * *

It is Kite-Flyer's Day at Garreg Mach Monastery.

Sylvain scarfs down fifteen takoyaki from a festival stall before admitting, "I'm gonna throw up."

When Felix deadpans, "Ah, my dear husband," it's meant to sound sarcastic, but he can see in Sylvain's ear-to-ear grin that they both know he's trying the words on for size.

(What do you know? It's a perfect fit.)

Earlier that day, they'd met up with Annette and Mercedes for lunch, which bled into afternoon tea at Annette's place. Predictably, they get chewed out for eloping. They're held at (butter)knife-point to swear that they'll throw a proper party—or at least let their friends put up a celebration _for_ them—as soon as things settle down at school and work.

Ingrid and Dimitri make guest appearances via video chat from Enbarr and the Fódlan base at Duscur, respectively. A great deal of time is spent instructing Dimitri to _Lean away from the camera, dammit_ and _Use moisturizer for your pores!_

The evening of the kite festival arrives in measures, the drumbeat of a steady sun falling slow over gray knobs of mountains. The colors of the sky have just begun to blur into a peach sherbet when, from a distance, a flash of green catches Felix's eye.

As the very person who suggested that Felix consider applying to the Biochem program, Byleth is excited to hear that he's been doing well at DIT. When he bitches about his first two rotations, she urges him to be patient, take care, and be unafraid to step outside his comfort zone in his search for a thesis lab.

"What about Luzia Amis? You might like her lab," she suggests.

"I don't think so," Felix says, blanching. "I'm taking her class this quarter, and just thinking about my _own_ DNA gives me the hives these days."

Byleth strikes a thinker's pose as she gives this some consideration. "You're smart, Felix. What you don't know, you can pick it up. Science is just science, but a good advisor will save you a lot of heartache over your the five years."

Felix is in grad school to do kickass science, not to play house, so instinct tells him to reject this outright. But when he examines what turned him off about his first two rotations—#1: a phantom advisor and #2: a lab so clearly divided along ethnic lines that Felix decided he'd rather hang out with the crazy-eyed squirrels in the quadrangle during lunch instead—he wonders if maybe he shouldn't at least pocket her advice to mull over in private later.

Anyway, they move on to talk of martial arts, then cats, then the shiny ring she notices on Felix's finger. The sun has all but sunken past the line of the horizon by the time she has to go help set up the lantern release. She pushes the yellow polyester contraption she's been dragging behind her into Felix's arms and bids her goodbye.

Felix can't decide what's worse: letting Sylvain sweet-talk him into flying the damn thing or knowing that Sylvain has taken _countless_ pictures of him tearing down the field like a maniac trying to get the kite to take off into the twilit sky.

Back at the hotel that night, Felix grumbles around his toothbrush and a mouthful of toothpaste, "Why are all of your favorite pictures of me the ones where I look like trash?"

Sylvain peers up from his camera, beaming too widely for the non-creepy category. "You're always pretty. There's poetic justice in seeing you disheveled."

" _Poetic justice_." Felix is not above making gagging noises.

The gagging turns very real very fast, an hour later, when Felix decides to distract him from his camera by crawling between his legs. Felix can't help feeling smug over the fact that he manages to rob Sylvain of the mental capacity to start up about fucking _poetry_ again.

He does have to rebrush, though.

* * *

When Felix goes back to school on Monday, he's met with questions from the meddlesome bunch that invited themselves to his courthouse wedding about whether or not he feels like a man reborn now that he's married. He doesn't, of course, in the same way that you feel no more adult for having turned 18.

But it's just that tiny bit harder to go out for his early morning runs when he wakes up to the innocence of his husband's pale lashes. He finds his own left hand resting protectively over Sylvain's bare chest more often than he'd like to admit. And it makes his heart beat a little faster to think that it is his husband who patiently works the knots out of his wet hair after he showers, and it is his husband who collects his dirty socks off the floor on laundry day. When Sylvain cooks for him, it is his husband's food that fills his stomach. When they tumble into bed together, it is his husband's fingers, his husband's tongue, his husband's cock that brings him over the edge again and again.

Sylvain is, in every way, his to kiss, his to touch, and his to love.

Still, Felix has a hard time staying in bed after he wakes. Sylvain will sleep in for as long as he can on the weekends, so Felix leaves him be, occupying himself with sword swings or the free weights that they leave in one corner of the living room. He keeps one ear open for the sound of Baby's collar bell, though, listening for when she comes skipping down the stairs. This usually means that her pillow has been compromised by Sylvain stirring around, half-awake, negotiating with himself to stay in bed for five more minutes.

When Sylvain sees Felix slip back through the bedroom door, he'll smile in that soft, lazy way of the sun meandering across the midday sky, and Felix will have no choice but to slide back under the covers just to feel his sleep-warm skin and kiss his sleep-soured mouth.

While Felix keeps pretty normal student hours, Sylvain works weekends with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off. On the mornings that they both have to be out the door by 8AM, they do-si-do past each other with only fleeting touches to the waist or arm. In their cramped bathroom, Sylvain spends way too much time on his 10-step skincare routine while Felix sprays toothpaste suds all over the mirror. In the kitchen, Sylvain makes coffee and watches Felix scurry around doing a dozen things at once and sometimes tripping over Baby in his haste. When that happens, Sylvain reaches out a hand, offers his chest; he's there to steady him.

For better or for worse, Sylvain is a person who keeps the storm at bay as he plays safehouse with the ones he loves. Knowing him is a process of playing judge, detective, and jury. Gathering clues. Conducting cross-examinations of the witnesses. Determining which pieces of testimony are intentionally ambivalent.

In the weeks after they get married, Felix takes a renewed interest in learning about Sylvain's life before he came into the picture. He's somewhat successful in this endeavor, discovering a few details Sylvain's never mentioned before.

For example, Sylvain was fourteen when he first saw his older brother in court.

For example, Sylvain hates bedtime stories.

"The nanny I had when I was little never wanted to improvise beyond the happily ever after," he says. "Can't blame her, though. It was only her job to read the story."

Felix's chest draws tight thinking about the tales of knighthood his dad and brother used to play tag-team acting out for him every night. He convinces himself that it's simply an act of convenience—killing two birds with one stone, if you will—when he starts spinning stories about the key players of his molecular biology final.

He recounts them to Sylvain in bed. There's the one starring the samurai Shugoshin, who protects Lord Centromere from attempts by the Separase faction to disunite the loyals of his keep. There's the one about the sisters of the Topoisomerase family who cut the ties between people who strangle each other half to death trying to keep them close.

The stories and their ever-afters sometimes help Sylvain find sleep, but more often than not, he still lays awake long after Felix drifts off, flip-flopping like pancakes next to him.

Occasionally, the metaphorical breakfast preparation wakes Felix back up. He's unfailingly grumpy about it.

"Fuck, do you know what time it is?" He glowers at the hideous wallpaper of buds and leaves plastered over their bedroom walls.

"Good morning, my sweet. The local time is 2:55 A—"

"Sylvain. _Sleep_."

"With the weight of the world on my chest?"

"That's the weight of Baby's fat ass," Felix hisses. Baby glares at him indignantly, two reflexive circles of moonlight. "Can't you count sheep or something?"

"I already did that. I counted, like, four hundred some sheep, so I started making yarn. And then I made you a cashmere sweater, but I still had some yarn left over, so I opened a sweater franchise."

Felix falls silent for a long minute, whether in exasperation or disbelief, he isn't even sure himself. "Well, count some more. Maybe if you sell enough sweaters, you'll make enough money to finally do that round-the-world photo tour."

"Only if it's enough for a trip for two." Felix feels Sylvain curl himself into a ball behind him. "Felix," he says, voice quiet and warm in this big, bloomless room, "I've only ever loved you. How scary is that?"

One sharp intake of breath fills Felix's chest like a helium balloon. He feels Sylvain wiggle forward to fit his body around the curve of Felix's back. Together, they make an open quotation for a boundless possibility of admissions. There are greedy, selfish replies swimming through Felix's head: _that's fine, be mine only, let it be me, me, only me_ , but—

"Yeah," he whispers back. "Terrifying."

A thick-muscled arm ropes around his waist, and then there is only the distant sound of the sea and frogs gargling outside their window. When Sylvain speaks again, his voice is cleared of its earlier vulnerability. Felix wonders if that makes the response he gave right or wrong.

"Maybe you can tell me about...hmm, the electron transport chain? I can try counting electrons instead."

The scientist inside Felix can't help pointing out, "It'd make more sense to be counting hydrogen ions, in that case."

"Mmmmm, yeah," Sylvain moans, husky and overzealous and a total dumbass, "I get so hot when you talk nerdy to me."

"I can't believe I love you. I _married_ you. What the hell, Felix. _What. the. hell_."

He feels Sylvain smile into his hair "Once upon a time…?" he prompts.

Felix sighs, closes his eyes. Projecting the figure from his lecture notes onto the back of his eyelids, he begins to narrate:

"Once upon a time, there was a brave battalion of electrons who arrived at the Fort Nadha, prepared to reduce the impregnable fortress to rubble…"


	4. Chapter 4

Felix is thirteen the year Glenn's uniform comes home.

He doesn't talk about thirteen.


	5. Chapter 5

Miracle of miracles, they're running early for the holiday party.

If they want to stay that way, though, Felix probably shouldn't be thinking about tracing every ridge of the hard, wet body in front of him with his slippery hands.

He shouldn't.

_Really._

"We don't have to go to this thing," he says.

"Stop staring at my dick." Sylvain laughs when Felix scowls up at him petulantly.

He picks up Sylvain's girly bar soap from the shower niche. It is pastel green, and it's called a _beauty bar_. It makes Felix smell like pear and aloe. "You have this _one_ Friday night off, and we're going to spend it with people from _school_."

"I have from the 23rd to the 3rd off, and the 11th, too, for Saint Seiros Day. We'll have plenty of wet naked time." Sylvain winks, ducking back under the spray to rinse the shampoo out of his hair. When he surfaces, he pushes his dripping fringe out of his face, continuing, "You only have this _one_ chance to parade me around on your arm in front of your friends, you know."

That's not even true; they'll be at Annette's New Year's party in two weeks. Felix makes a face. "Ugh, what are you, a woman?"

Sylvain's expression crashes for only a split second before he picks himself back up. "Can't a guy aspire to be a trophy husband?" A grin stretches itself oh-so-casually across his lips, but Felix can't find it in his eyes. Sylvain drops his gaze and tries to take the soap from Felix's hand. "Here, let me—"

"Wait." Felix catches Sylvain by the wrist. "I fucked up. I didn't mean that."

Sylvain shakes his head, sending droplets flying from his hair in a radial pattern. He slips gently out of Felix's grasp and guides Felix toward him with a hand over the back of his head. "It's okay," he murmurs, pressing a kiss in Felix's wet hair. When he pulls back, Felix sees that his face has softened, the sharp lines of his practiced smile rounded into a genuine one. "I always want to flaunt to the world that you're mine, and I just sometimes wish that you felt the same way about me." He lets out a self-deprecating laugh. "Tall order, I know."

Felix's heart punches him from the inside. "It's not that," he blurts, louder than necessary. He digs his nails into the soap. "It's not that I don't want to show you off, but what am I supposed to do when everyone starts wanting you the way I do?"

The way Sylvain's eyes light up makes the hot flush of embarrassment in Felix's cheeks worth it. "Oh? Do tell me more about how you want me."

Felix flicks him in the sternum. "Don't let it get to your head."

"Too late!" Sylvain grins with all his teeth. He sticks out a hand, wiggling his fingers at the stupid beauty bar. "Here, gimme. I know you like it when I do it for you."

"No." Felix rubs the soap emphatically over his own stomach. "We'll never make it to the party if you do that."

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Hmph. I guess. Some other time." Felix lifts his eyebrows meaningfully. "Tonight, I got a husband to parade around."

Sylvain laughs, bending down for a series of short pecks that run from the curve of Felix's cheekbone down to his lips, sweet and playful. He, too, smells of pears and aloe, but on Sylvain, the fragrance isn't half so bad. "You are so unfair," he murmurs.

Felix bumps their noses together. "You're telling me."

* * *

On the last weekend of every year, the three branches of Fódlan's armed forces gather at Goneril Stadium for a friendly lacrosse tournament. Dedue and Dimitri get into Derdriu on Thursday night to spend a couple of days with Felix and Sylvain before heading off to the game on Saturday.

"Oh. It is very large," says Dimitri as he steps into the kitchen. He studies the picnic table. "It's much larger than I expected from the pictures you sent."

"That's what she said!" Sylvain hollers from the entryway.

Felix shoots Dimitri a look. "You set him up for that one."

"I do apologize, sincerely," Dimitri says, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. "But it is a rather consternating piece of timber."

Sylvain peeks out from behind Dedue to coo, "Ooh, Your Highness, was there a play on 'wood' lost in there somewhere?"

Dimitri ducks his head, a pleased little blush spreading over his cheeks.

Felix looks between the two of them, then up at Dedue. "Is this what a year of slumming it with the average joes has done to him, or is there a portal to some alternate reality behind that eyepatch?"

"I would _love_ to live in an alternate universe where every sentence is a hidden dick joke." Sylvain slaps Dedue on the back like, _Am I right?_ Dedue remains reticent on the matter. "What do you say, Your Highness? Should we get matching patches? Patch pals?!"

"Patch pals is to quit smoking." Dedue gestures to the army-issue duffels they brought in from the car. "Where should we leave these?"

Sylvain leads them up two flights of stairs to the study that's been converted back to the guest bedroom it was always meant to be. They'd set up the floor futon earlier that evening because a combined 200kg of muscle seemed far too likely to collapse their flimsy futon couch. After Dimitri and Dedue get their stuff settled, Sylvain herds everyone around for the grand tour of the house. They work their way from top to bottom and end predictably on, "Anyway, here's Wonder Wall."

By then, it's half past midnight, and since Dimitri and Dedue have two whole days in Derdriu, they decide to call it a day.

It must be at least a few hours later when Felix stirs awake in bed. At first, he thinks it's from Baby putting her stinky foot in his face (again), but as he blinks awake, he sees that Baby is nowhere to be found. And neither is Sylvain.

Frowning to himself, Felix reaches over to pat the other side of the bed and finds the sheets cold. So it's not like Sylvain's just slipped into the bathroom for a piss. That's weird. For all of Sylvain's chronic insomnia, he isn't usually one to leave the bed in the middle of the night, preferring to fuck around on his phone or let audiobooks about obscure historical events lull him back to sleep instead.

Felix swings his legs off the side of the bed and shivers when his bare feet hit the cold floor. He stuffs his head through a hoodie he finds laying at the top of the laundry pile. The bottom hem falls down to mid-thigh—Sylvain's, then. When he wanders out into the hall toward the top of the stairs, he hears hushed voices emanating from the direction of the kitchen. He follows the muted sounds, stopping just short of where the light from the kitchen slants over Wonder Wall. He doesn't know why he's hiding, but there's something intimate about the low tones of Sylvain and Dimitri's easy conversation that makes him stop short of intruding.

"Does it hurt?"

"Ah, no, just a mild infection."

"Gotta say, you really gave Felix a scare when you came strolling out from arrivals with that eyepatch."

Sounding chagrined, Dimitri says, "My apologies. I should have let you know ahead of time. I didn't think much of it."

"So, tell me the truth now, Your Royal Horniness"—Felix imagines Sylvain leaning forward on his elbows over the tabletop like a gossip-hungry schoolgirl—"did you catch that eye infection the _fun_ way?"

A strangled sound. "I do not believe I understand..."

"You don't sound so sure there, buddy," Sylvain teases. Maybe Dimitri shoots him a reproachful look. The next time Sylvain speaks, his voice spans the room, suddenly sober, "To be honest, though, I'm relieved it isn't anything serious. You doing all right out there?"

"Do you mean in Duscur, or on the base?"

"That's not one and the same, huh."

Dimitri hesitates, taking the time to choose his words carefully. "On the base, I have people's respect because of my position and family. Within the villages of Duscur, I must work to earn it. Is it contrary to think that I prefer things that way?"

"Nope." Sylvain lets the _p_ pop. "Sounds perfectly on-brand for you."

Dimitri chuckles. "I will accept that as a compliment."

"Oh, it's a compliment, don't worry. Very princely of you."

"Now you're just making fun."

"Of His Royal Highness's devotion to making amends for our barbaric history in order to carve a path towards peace? Never."

Dimitri sighs. "Some may scoff that so lofty a goal as true peace between our nations is unachievable within our lifetime, but I feel that I must exert myself toward the endeavor nonetheless."

"Isn't that all anyone can ever do? Do good with good intentions?"

"I suppose that is true."

"Hard on yourself as ever, I see," Sylvain says. "Aren't you pushing yourself too much, living on the base? I know it's your princely duty and whatnot, but…"

"I am somewhat more acclimated to the sounds of the range now…" Dimitri trails off for a moment before continuing, "though I must confess that it continues to be a struggle to engage myself in shooting practice."

"And are you sleeping all right?"

"We're both here, aren't we?"

"…I guess that's not something to drink to."

"Not quite."

A brief lull passes over the room. It's quiet save for the sound of the bottoms of ceramic mugs scraping across the tabletop.

Dimitri clears his throat. "I heard from a colleague that… Well, there are quite a number of men who knew Felix's brother."

Felix's heart drops into his stomach.

"Oh?"

"Does he ever speak to you about it?"

"Not really. I don't know much, other than that Felix looked up to him. Sounds like it really fucked things up between him and his dad, too, when Glenn passed."

Felix has never heard Sylvain say Glenn's name before. He doesn't know what kind of face he's making or what's going on inside him. Even immediately after everything happened, he was never so affected by the loss—just pissed off, mostly. But recently, every reminder of Glenn feels like a sword splitting him in two.

"It sounds like he was truly exceptional. Everyone who knew him had their own tale of his excellence, both as a man and a soldier."

"Oh yeah? What do they say?"

"One of the men, his lieutenant when he first enlisted, told me that—"

Felix feels his feet carry him back up the stairs. He crawls under the covers still wrapped up in Sylvain's sweater. He loses track of how long he's spent staring at the flora on the wallpaper by the time the door creaks open and the bed dips next to him. Baby hops on board, too, purring obnoxiously. Felix doesn't lift his head but tenses when Sylvain slips a hand under his sweater, betraying the fact that he's feigning sleep.

"What're you doing looking so cute in my hoodie, hm?"

"I was cold," Felix says. He doesn't realize how true it is until Sylvain's body wraps around him from behind like a second skin, and he trembles from the sudden heat.

"You all right, Fe?"

"I'm fine." This hangs in the air over them, swaying and spinning like a kinetic mobile. "Thought I saw a ghost."

"But you don't believe in ghosts."

"Blame Dimitri."

A pause that sounds like shock. "Well. That seems a bit cruel."

Felix shrugs. His body is a vessel of indifference, numbed of sensitivities.

"Felix?"

Felix squeezes his eyes shut, forces his breathing to slow, to steady. Sylvain tries his name one more time. Felix gives no response. Sylvain places a kiss in the long tangle of his hair before relaxing into his pillow.

Almost a half hour passes before quiet snores tickle the back of Felix's neck.

He is still struggling to repaint his brother's features.

* * *

_"Nine!" Annette cheers over the din of the party._

Felix winces away from yet another guy stumbling backwards toward the beer pong tournament taking place in the sunroom of the lake house. "Who the fuck are all these people? Annette said we'd _know_ them. That this was a fucking _potluck_."

"People must have brought their own people," Sylvain says. "And to be fair, you are very much enjoying the potluck spread."

Felix growls, spitting the bones of the chicken foot he's been gnawing on into a red Solo cup. Each digit leaves his mouth perfectly clean, devoid of any trace of skin or cartilage.

Sylvain stares at him. "I can't decide if I'm appalled or turned on by this little gift of yours."

_"Eight!" Ingrid toots her noisemaker._

Really, the most infuriating part of this whole thing is how many of these strangers seem to know Sylvain. In the time that they've been together, Sylvain has never shown much interest in the party scene. Felix has heard enough stories from others, though, to know that serial party-hopping used to be one of his favorite ways to stave off loneliness—which Felix can only assume is code for _pick up bodies to warm his bed_.

And that's as far as he lets himself go with that thought.

"Oh, Sylvain! Hi," says a girl with lips glossy like she's just eaten a pork chop. "I haven't seen you since the night that Cats came to GMM on tour." She puts a hand on Sylvain's arm; Felix is trying to set her on fire with his eyes. "Do you remember?"

The brunette she walked up to them with laughs, but it sounds like poison. "Ha! Does Sylvain _ever_ remember?"

Felix watches Sylvain give her a tight smile. He's only barely opened his mouth to reply when the brunette pushes on:

"What was it that you told me when we ran into each other after you blocked my number? That your brain had an auto-clear function triggered by the break of dawn? Now let's see, was that before or _after_ you offered to 'hook me up' with a replacement for you?"

"Biiitch, he said that?" Some guy in a backwards baseball cap guffaws as he joins the circle around them. " _Classic_."

A fourth guy pokes his head out from between Douche Cap and Porkchop Lips, hanging like a lemur from their shoulders. "Hey, is that a _wedding ring_ on your finger, man?"

Everyone's attention drops to Sylvain's hand. A hush falls over their corner of the room.

Felix doesn't realize how tightly wound his fists are until his palms sting with the bite of blunt nails. Sylvain _must_ feel Felix glaring bullet holes into him, but he refuses to make eye contact, keeping his silence, even as the voices pick up again in a swirl of _So how'd it happen? Didya knock her up?_ and _Had it coming, buddy, with the way you got around_ , and _Do you needa reminder of your wife's name after you fuck, or do you just call her sweetheart—_

Felix feels his rage boil over, the cup of bones in his hand crumpling under the clench of his fingers. "Hey _assholes_ , you can all go fuck—"

"Sorry." Sylvain is looking at the brunette. "That was a really awful thing I did to you."

Her eyes are blue marbles as she stares up at him. Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she recovers from her shock. She huffs, crossing her arms. "What the hell, Sylvain? You think I even give a fuck about you or your apologies?"

"Still." His mouth is pulled taut, and when Felix touches his back, he can feel the tension in every muscle there. His sweater is soaked through with sweat. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, look at you, baby," Porkchop Lips murmurs, her hand sliding up Sylvain's arm. "It's okay."

If it weren't for Mercedes materializing out of nowhere and stepping into the middle of the circle, Felix doesn't know if anyone in this crowd would have left with any teeth in their mouth.

"There you are, my darlings." Mercedes smiles at Felix and Sylvain briefly before turning toward the unwelcome company. "Are you all here to toast this beautiful couple?" She raises a flute of champagne held delicately between her thumb and forefinger.

"Oh gods, they're _fa_ —"

"I would think twice about that," Mercedes warns, her voice turning icy enough to freeze over hellfire. "Unless, perhaps, you'd like for me to invite you all to revel in this stunning snowstorm we're enjoying outside tonight?"

The crowd scatters as quickly as it'd gathered, collectively muttering something about finding more drinks.

After they're out of sight, Sylvain shakes his head, releasing a sigh. "Goddess bless you, Mercie."

There's still a hot seed of fury flashing in Felix's chest, but he forces himself to loosen the death grip he's got on the now-wrinkled material of Sylvain's sweater. He lets his hand fall back down to his side.

Mercedes casts a reproachful look at them over her champagne flute. "Couldn't keep yourselves out of trouble for even a moment, could you?" When Felix gawks at her in outrage at the unfairness of that accusation, her expression gentles. "I'm teasing, dear."

Felix juts out his jaw sulkily. "That wasn't clear."

"Well, I suppose I _am_ still a bit miffed at the two of you," she says. "When are you ever going to let us celebrate your marriage? Cake won't eat itself, you know."

"I do miss your cupcakes, Mercie," Sylvain says.

Mercedes pokes Sylvain's side. "Do you, now? All the cannoli on your Instagram suggests otherwise! I feel as though I've been all but replaced."

"Never!" Sylvain gasps in affected affront when she pinches him right above the band of his jeans. "Unhand my muffin top!"

"Muffins are also part of the problem. Midnight muffins," Felix chimes in.

Sylvain shields his chest with a dramatic hand. "Et tu?"

"Did you sneeze?"

" _Felix._ "

Felix shrugs.

_"Seven!" Mercedes clinks her glass._

As it nears midnight, they weave their way through to the living room, where the NYE broadcast plays on the 60" flat screen mounted over the fireplace. They find a corner up against a window away from the crush of people.

They're perched on the sill, watching the blizzard blaze over bald trees. Sylvain's voice is barely audible over the chatter of the room. "So, that sucked, earlier."

He's looking down at their loosely joined hands, just the last two fingers interlaced.

Felix pauses with his cup—not the one with the bones; this one is filled with the spicy rum Annette had brought him—halfway to his lips. He brings the cup back down over his knee. With his pinky, he picks at a loose thread in one of the holes of his ripped black. "They were being assholes."

"What goes around comes around." Sylvain shrugs, and the long fringe he usually keeps pushed back flops free over his eyes. "I don't know why I didn't deal with it better."

Felix grimaces. "Better how? Throw your head back and laugh it off? Pretend like it doesn't kill you that people won't let you move on from the stupid shit you did when you were young and didn't know how to get help?"

Sylvain's fingers clench around Felix's, and it's all the answer Felix needs. "I just wish you didn't have to see that."

"Why? You don't think I already know?"

"Of course you do." Sylvain coughs up a laugh. Then, finding nothing actually funny about the situation, he kicks his heel against the wall. "Of course you do."

"I don't care," Felix says.

"Don't you, though? When girls corner us at parties to publicly air their grievances about what a douchebag your husband is—isn't it humiliating?"

Sylvain's mouth is a slashed frown across his face. Felix reaches for him with his free hand, wanting to wipe it away. At the last minute, he changes his mind and gives his cheek a tap that's a little sharper than a pat but not quite a slap. Sylvain startles, his expression shaking loose.

"Fine. I do care, but—" Felix pinches Sylvain's cheek when his eyes begin to shutter, imploring him to listen to the end. " _But_. The difference is that they only care to get revenge. I care because I want to see you get better. Because I know _you_ want to get better."

Sylvain works his bottom lip between his teeth. The doubt is still there in his eyes, scoring Felix's face like a pair of searchlights, a silent _Am I worthy of your trust?_ burning behind them.

"Six!"

The countdown crescendos behind them, and the floor trembles with the weight of fifty-some people hopping up and down in anticipation.

"Five!"

Instead of paying them any attention, Felix tips back the rest of his drink in one fast swig and slams the cup down on the windowsill. His throat is on fire and his head is spinning from the sudden rush of heat. He twists their hands apart to fist the front of Sylvain's shirt, yanking him down so that their noses are crushed together.

"Dumbass." In his head, it's all urgent and seductive, but in reality he might be shouting, just a little. "Don't you know that the best thing I did this year was marrying you and your pretty mouth?"

Then, he's thrown himself onto Sylvain and his pretty mouth before the ball even drops. They don't realize that they're a few minutes into the new year and everyone else in the room has detached from their chosen kissing partners until Ingrid boos at them to "Get a room!"

So, they do.

* * *

They weather the storm at Mercedes's place before heading back to Derdriu early in the afternoon of the 1st.

It's almost the 2nd by the time they get home. Baby greets them at the door, chattering excitedly about _her_ New Year's. They treat her to a chunk of salmon on top of her wet food, all of which she gobbles up with gusto before collapsing into a food coma between their pillows.

They follow suit, crawling under the covers in only their underwear and sealing their skin together for warmth. Sylvain mouths sloppy kisses over Felix's shoulders, then collarbones, then neck, before Felix twists to meet his lips, grinding lazily into him. Between kisses, they talk about how they're never going to take down the holiday lights, about how they should spend the remainder of the holiday lounging around naked. Then, they fall asleep, exhausted from the long drive.

Felix feels so well-rested and _good_ when he wakes up the next morning that he doesn't think much of the empty spot in bed next to him. He wouldn't have expected Sylvain to be up and about until at least noon on his last day off, but maybe Baby woke him up and he just couldn't fall back asleep. Maybe Felix will find the two of them curled up at the window seat in the study with one of the worn paperbacks from Sylvain's collection, and he'll snap a photo for the next time his dad asks after his cat and "his other one".

Even with the heat on, Felix still finds it a tad chilly to actually wander around comfortably with no clothes on, so he pulls on some loungewear and steps out into the hall. The only noises he hears come from the downstairs, though, not up. Breakfast, then. Maybe Sylvain is flipping omelets at the stove in only his red plaid boxers; his body always seems to run hotter than Felix's. The thought bubble pops when Felix registers the absence of the sweet and savory fragrances he associates with Sylvain's breakfast repertoire.

When he rounds into the kitchen, he sees why.

Even by conventional standards, 9AM is a troubling time to be drinking. It's downright alarming for Sylvain, for whom drinking is not an act of joy but punishment. It'd been one of the first things that therapy helped him realize. They don't usually even keep hard liquors around the house anymore.

"That the stuff Dimitri and Dedue brought over?" Felix slides in next to Sylvain on the bench, not yet touching save for a brief brush of shirt sleeves and flannel-clad thighs.

Sylvain nods and takes another gulp from the glass in front of him.

"So, how's the Duscur whiskey?"

Sylvain shrugs. "I don't know."

Felix grits his teeth. He supposes he can't blame either Dimitri or Dedue for not knowing when Sylvain insists not "not making a big deal" out of the fact that he's been trying to live with his feelings sober.

Dropping the casual act, Felix wraps his hand around Sylvain's on the glass. "C'mon. Talk to me."

When Sylvain lifts his face, his eyes are the same color as the whiskey and swimming the same way, too. Felix can't decide if he'd rather pull him into his chest and keep him sheltered there or shake him until the name of the person who did this to him drops like pocket change into Felix's hands.

"I told my mom about us," Sylvain says.

"Oh," Felix says.

Then, "Wait."

Then, " _What_?"

Sylvain chuckles darkly. "Right."

He goes to bring the glass to his lips again, but Felix yanks his hand away from it. Sylvain lets him, like he can't even muster a care. "Why did she even call you?"

"I called her."

"Huh? I don't—" Felix feels the crease between his brows deepen in confusion. " _You_ called her to tell her about us?"

"At the party," Sylvain says, and the sigh that he lets out is so heavy his entire body sags with the weight of it, "when you said that the best thing you did this year was marrying me, I thought, 'Me too.'"

Felix still can't make sense of how this led to Sylvain baring himself to a person who's never, ever had his best interests at heart, but he scoots a little closer and squeezes Sylvain's hand. He's here to listen.

"I guess I just…" Sylvain makes a rare clicking noise with his tongue, jamming his free hand through his unwashed hair. "I'm at this place in my life where—where maybe everything's not _perfect_ -perfect, but it's pretty damn good. I'm doing something I like and making a decent living on my own, and I'm with _you_ , and my life is, I don't know, actually going _well_?" He laughs, but it's a joyless sound. "For the first time ever, I look in the mirror and think, hey, that guy might be pretty all right."

"Good. I like him, too," Felix says firmly, showing the hint of a smile.

Sylvain returns it wanly. "She doesn't even remember your name, love. Person #1 in my life and she doesn't even know your name."

"I'd rather not remember hers either," Felix says. He's only met Elaine Gautier once, at Sylvain's graduation, but he'd immediately recognized where Sylvain learned that 120-watt smile that left him as hollowed and threaded as a lightbulb. He's hated her for it since. "What did she say to you?"

Sylvain shakes his head. "I don't want to talk about it with you. Wouldn't help."

It stings, the quick rejection of it. "Are you sure?"

Felix watches Sylvain's chest balloon with a long breath before deflating again. He can almost hear Sylvain counting down inside his head, trying to calm the maddening race of thoughts there. "Yeah."

There's nothing Felix wants more than to push the point, find out how Sylvain's been hurt and what he can do to make it better—but this isn't about Felix. _Listen_ , he reminds himself. _Listen to what he needs_.

"Whatever she said to you, it's bullshit, you know," he decides is the best thing he can say.

"I know," Sylvain says. "It's been years of trying to unlearn equating their feelings about me with my own, but…" He shakes his head. "Guess I'm still a work in progress."

"Isn't everyone?"

When Sylvain tilts his head up at Felix, there's just the shadow of a genuine smile there. A flicker of light. "I don't know, darling, I think you're pretty perfect."

"You're _drunk_."

"—For me, then. All your imperfections are perfect _for me_ ," Sylvain says. "And I just want to tell the whole world about it."

There's something there; Felix feels it in the air, hears it in the cadence of his speech, sees it there in his eyes. But before he can put a finger on it, it's lost in the mist and he's just kind of staring at Sylvain with half-formed words in his half-gaping mouth.

"What _ever_ ," he huffs, jostling Sylvain in the side.

"See?" Sylvain links their fingers and presses the back of Felix's hand to his mouth. "So cute. So strong. So smart. The future Dr. Fraldarius."

" _No_." Felix lets out a groan from the depths of his soul, burying his face into Sylvain's shoulder. "Don't talk to me about school yet. I will end you, don't _test_ me," he threatens as, again, something in what Sylvain said catches like Velcro in his mind. _Fraldarius_. He lifts his head. "Huh. Did you ever get your name changed?"

Sylvain's eyes shift to one side. "Oh. No. Not yet."

"It's been almost three months since we got married. Isn't there a time limit for stuff like that?"

"I don't think so? Or at least it didn't say on that informational sheet we got."

"Are you still going to do it?"

A beat. "Yeah," Sylvain says. "Yeah, I'll take care of it. It's just that the county office's pretty out of the way, and I've been busy."

"Well, you were the one who said you wanted to," Felix presses. Irritation. That's the tension at the back of his neck. But what's the word for the knot in his chest? "Something about how if I get horribly mauled, you don't wanna give them any reason not to let you into the ICU."

"Hopefully you're not planning to throw yourself at a bear anytime soon."

"It's not really something you plan for," Felix snaps.

"But you're not _allowed_ to get hurt, Fe. It would break my heart," Sylvain says, the tender timber of his voice an absolute outrage.

It's goddamn unfair is what it is, how with just an altered pitch, an adoring look, he can unroot the seed of uncertainty germinating in Felix's chest. How he'll caress Felix's face with his right thumb and Felix will know that he's tracing the series of moles on his cheek again and feel the weight of his reverence with that single touch.

If touch is Felix's kryptonite, then words to Sylvain are pure magic. They make things real for him. In that moment, Felix resolves to lift every curse Elaine and Walter Gautier have ever cast on him.

And where better to start than: "I love you, you know."

He's instantly rewarded with his favorite of Sylvain's smiles, the one where his mouth is a bow undrawn and all the warmth gathers in his eyes, gooey butterscotch once more. He would lay down his sword for that smile, so he can certainly table the talk of names for that smile.

At their feet, Baby toddles by, wiping her wet nose on their calves and letting out a long, _pitiful_ whimper like she hasn't eaten in months. Felix rolls his eyes while Sylvain laughs; they exchange a fond look.

"Breakfast?" Sylvain asks.

"Breakfast," Felix agrees, picking the half-empty glass of whiskey to pour down the drain. "How do you feel about omelets?"


	6. Chapter 6

What happens next is a matter of misdirection, or inattention, depending on who you are.

It starts small. A crumb brushed off the table without a second thought. A couple pairs of socks that don't make it into the hamper. A few conversations tuned out here and there. That's not enough to split them down the middle, surely. Not when they reminisce about their years together as they rearrange Wonder Wall to make room for the Kite-Flyer's Day photos; not when they turn over a patch of soil in the yard to plant red peppers and spring onion together.

See, how cute!

_—But the breadcrumb still matters._

The breadcrumb, the socks, the everyday conversations. They all matter. How could they not, when it's the rest of your life we're talking about? You've raised the stakes with marriage even though you know your fury will burn you alive if he's another person who leaves and betrays you; you know you'll never find worth in your life if you disappoint the one person who makes you feel like there's something good and golden inside you.

You're not totally clueless, of course. You feel the warnings tug at your shirt sleeve, beckoning you to pay attention, to pay care. And yet, it shocks you how easy it is to look at someone every day and not see their shadows darkening right before your eyes.

So maybe what happens next is just a sleight of hand. It's a disappearing act that Felix assists in, though he won't even know of his part in the collaboration until later that spring.

The morning after the whisky incident, Felix means to check in with Sylvain again. But by the time his fourth alarm finally wakes him, Sylvain is already gone for work. Felix jumps out of bed, low-key pissed that Sylvain left him to sleep in, and tears through the house getting ready for the first day of winter quarter.

Still, he means to at least text and takes his phone out to do just that. But a notification reminds him to swing by Amis lab to talk about his rotation project, and he's immediately consumed by a thick muck of anxiety. He pockets his phone, says bye to Baby, and heads out with his heart rattling inside his ribcage.

Professor Amis isn't in her office when he knocks, so he wanders into the wet-lab space across the hall to look for her. At a little past 9AM, the bays of black benches are still devoid of white lab coats bumming around. Must be a night owl lab, he notes to himself.

That's not a bad thing; he can imagine coming to work early just to enjoy the peace of an empty lab. With just the soft hum of -80C freezers and the negative pressure airflow system, it's blissfully quiet here.

At the end of one of the benches sits—or _sprawls_ , rather—a round slab of brown jelly with black bottle caps for eyes and a wide arc of pipette tips for a mouth. The red marking tape above its head identifies the object as Bob the Blob. Another piece of tape off to the left shouts at someone named Adrien to "stop forgetting your agar in the autoclave overnight!!!!"

Five exclamation points.

Felix resists the temptation to give Bob a poke, turning down a narrow hall between the two adjoining labs. To the one side of the hall is a dark room with a microscope, and to the other is what looks to be the break room. Professor Amis is perched against the arm of the brown chenille couch, scraping at the bottom of a paper cup with a wooden coffee stirrer.

"Good morning," Felix says.

"Don't you hate it when you know there's all this wonderful chocolate left over at the bottom of your cocoa?" she asks in lieu of a greeting, momentarily throwing Felix for a loop.

"No," he says.

She peers up at him over the clear frames of her glasses, her long, silver braid shifting over her shoulder.

"I don't like hot cocoa," he explains. "Or sweet things in general."

She hums, biting off the chocolate she's gathered at the tip of the stirrer. "Do you drink coffee?"

"Tea."

She sets down her cup on the little square table across from the couch and reaches back for a clear plastic bin containing bags of coffee beans, paper napkins, two candles, and other miscellanea buried in the mess. "Let's see, we do have some berry and flower blends around here somewhere." She rifles through the box. "Guess if you're not into sweets, berry teas probably aren't your favorite, huh."

Felix shifts on his feet, fidgeting with the barbell in his right ear. "I'm fine."

Her eyebrows rise on her forehead in a steady growth; the slow and deliberate way she studies him is downright unnerving. "How long do you plan to take to graduate, Felix?"

"The average time to graduate is five and a half years in this program," he says. "So, four."

The laughter that spills from her lips sounds genuinely delighted. "I like it," she replies with a nod. "Lysithea is aiming for three and a half, so the race is on."

Felix scowls. "What's the point of having a goal if you're not going to be realistic about it?"

Professor Amis tips her head to one side, eyes sparkling with amusement. "Well, she spent her winter vacation getting a head start on her project, so..."

Shit.

Of course she did.

As if it isn't enough that she's the youngest person to be admitted to the program, she's a fucking hard worker, too. If there's one person in the class who dug through the supplemental figures to look for the appropriate experimental controls, it's bound to be Lysithea.

Day one of his rotation and he's already been left in the dust.

"It took me six and a half years to finish my doctorate," Professor Amis's voice interrupts the bitter swirl of thoughts in his head. There's nothing in the confident set of her features that suggests she's in any way ashamed of this. "I put out three first-author papers and a kid in that time." She picks up her empty cup of cocoa again. "My husband took time off from his career to help watch after our Layla. Have you met my Adrien yet? He's the lab manager here."

"…Oh." Felix jabs a thumb over his shoulder. "The guy who leaves the agar in the autoclave."

Professor Amis sighs in this put-upon way Felix recognizes immediately as thinly concealed fondness. "He is brilliant but so forgetful. The silly man." She starts scraping for chocolate again, and Felix wonders if she knows she's smiling into her cup. "What were we talking about again?"

"Graduation time? And tea, before that."

"Yes, that's right. Go write down your preferred tea on the ordering board next to the incubators." She points with her stirrer. "We'll keep a stash in lab. Grad school is not an easy road to travel, no matter if you complete your thesis in three years or six. In Duscur we say that small joys are the true staple of life. When you're crying into your third failed gel at 11PM, a good cup of tea will save your soul, young man."

"Personal experience?" Felix asks.

A secretive smile tilts her brown, wrinkled lips. She rises to her small, loafer-clad feet. "Come. Let's discuss your project before we are derailed again."

As he follows her out to her office, he's surprised to find that, instead of the murky ambivalence that's resided there since the start of grad school, resolve wells in his gut.

* * *

There is a comic strip taped to the glass of the chemical hood comparing the omniscience of movie scientists to the extreme niche knowledge of real-life scientists. It perfectly summarizes the entire first four weeks of Felix's rotation.

He is an analytical chemist stuck in a molecular biology lab, and he sucks at asking for help. To add salt to injury, in the name of friendly competition, Professor Amis—"Call me Luzia, for gods' sake, Felix"—had sat him in the same bay as Lysithea, who is an _actual_ movie scientist. She has a clever thought for every group meeting presentation, and for how much data's been piling up on her desk, she doesn't seem to even spend very much time at her bench.

"I think you've done enough transformations to qualify for honorary Power Ranger status," Lysithea says one night, spinning half-circles in her chair.

"What," Felix grits, four tubes of cells in one hand, seven more in the other, and 20 seconds past when he was supposed to heat-shock the cells. The heat block isn't even set at the right temperature. "What the hell are you talking about."

Lysithea bounces to her feet and ambles toward the heat block. "You need this at 42?"

"I've got it," Felix growls. He does not have it.

"You should put those back on ice." She points to the tubes. "It doesn't really matter how long they sit with the DNA before you heat shock." A pointed look. "As you may know from the last seven times you've done this reaction."

He stabs the tubes back into the ice bucket with unnecessary force. "Shut up."

"Like I was saying, if you spent more time planning out what you're going to do before you do it, maybe you would've gotten that construct cloned by now."

"Maybe _you_ would have!" Felix explodes, throwing his gloved hands up in the air. He'd be more self-conscious about making a scene, but they're the only ones left in lab. "I've never done this before, okay? The most I knew about cloning before Luzia's class was Dolly the goddamn _sheep_! I can name every fucking chamber and valve in a Q-TOF but this—these"—he waves wildly at the tubes sitting innocently on ice—"fucking _bacteria_ and the stupid DNA and—" Slumping against his bench, he lets out a gnarl. "I don't even belong here."

Not in this lab, not in this program, surrounded by all these people who like to sit around and _ponder_ when what Felix needs is to be up on his feet _doing_ things. But a BS in science gets you a monkey's job for chump change and any master's program worth its name comes with an outrageous price tag and, for fuck's sake, the man he loves is a _photographer_.

These are all things he has no control over and that last bit something he wouldn't want to change even if he could. So, on his own part, what he's doing now makes sense. Get paid to do some extra training and relieve pressure off his and Sylvain's shared future.

The rationalization doesn't make going through with the plan any easier, though.

Felix keeps his eyes trained on the white linoleum floors. He doesn't know how to take Lysithea's silence or what he'd do with the judgement he'll see on her face. But when she speaks, she takes him by surprise: "You've used a Q-TOF before?"

He lifts his eyes to see her standing with her chin pinched in between her forefinger and thumb, inspecting him cautiously. "Yeah," he replies. "I practically lived in the mass spec facility at GMU."

"I see." She purses her lips in thought. "Well. If you want, I can help you figure out your cloning if—if you can tell me why the peaks are so erratic on my mass spec runs."

For all that she's quick to offer other people advice, Felix thinks this might be the first time he's ever heard her ask anyone for input on her own project. "I guess. You got the print-outs?"

"Over there." She points to the growing heap of data on her desk. It checks out that she's so rarely in lab if she's been whiling away the hours at the mass spec core, which is in a different building. "But first, you should get on with your cloning; otherwise, you'll be here past midnight."

Felix can feel her gaze on his back when he turns to transfer his cells, setting a timer for 60 seconds. The minute feels interminable in the silence that falls over them.

"I did all my reading, you know," she says, twirling a long strand of ivory white hair around one finger. "This combination of solvents should be correct, so I don't know why it isn't working."

"Sometimes, you just have to try things out. You'll have a better guess for what solvents work the more you do this," Felix says. "Book-learning isn't everything."

"It is when you've had fewer years at the bench than everyone else."

Felix scoffs. "It's not like you won't get to that age eventually. You just need more—"

"I don't have that kind of time to waste!"

Her outburst shoves him back a step. He blinks at her. "Because…you want to graduate in three and a half years?"

"It's none of your business." She crosses her arms and turns away from him.

The timer goes off.

She doesn't reveal any more on the matter that night, and Felix doesn't push. But in the coming weeks, between failed gels and a few successful ones too, they start talking. He loses track of the amount of time they spend together in lab, heads ducked over troubleshooting guides and protocols and subpar data from experiments that need to be repeated.

Together, they figure out that Lysithea needs to be using a different size column to separate her samples all along. As thanks—and according to her, bribery to keep it on the down-low that analytical chemistry is her weak point—she brings Felix cake.

"I don't eat cake," he tells her.

"Try it," she insists.

"No thanks. But I'll feed it to my trash can at home."

Lysithea's face falls in horror. "What the hell, Felix, I thought we were _friends_!"

It catches Felix unawares to realize that this is in fact— _somehow_ —true. "I meant my husband's trashcan stomach, not the actual garbage," he corrects.

She eyes him suspiciously for a few more seconds before relaxing back into the chenille couch. "Hmph. Well, that wasn't clear."

"I'll let you know what he thinks," Felix says, slotting the boxed slice of cake gingerly into his lunch bag.

"Your husband the sweet-tooth of the family?" A voice booms from directly behind Felix. He twists around to see Adrien sashaying into the breakroom, all 100kg of beefy shoulders and thunder thighs. "Name's Sylvain, right? Is he coming to the picnic next weekend?"

Felix shakes his head. "He works weekends."

"Aw, that's too bad. Next time, we'll have to plan something for a weekday evening." Adrien sets his three-tier lunch box on the table and pops the lid. He's practically salivating into the mountain of pork and potato before he whispers to himself, "Fuck. Forgot my fork."

Felix offers him the one he washed after finishing up his own lunch, and Adrien accepts it with an appreciative smile. "It's fine. Melanie won't be able to bring her kids if we made it on the weekdays." When he hears himself in his own ears, he's a little shocked for knowing that and _saying_ those words.

"Lil Dana and Ervin can sit one out. Mel's folks live around Derdriu, too, and they take the kids off her hands sometimes," Adrien says. "Everyone's been curious about your Sylvain."

 _His_ Sylvain. "He's just a guy."

"You'd probably get along with him, Adrien. Based on your energy and"—Lysithea makes an up-and-down gesture at him with a finger—"size."

Adrien laughs heartily, slapping the thick slab of a bulging pectoral with one meaty hand. "Hey Felix, you should invite him to come out to the gym with us sometime!"

Felix rolls his eyes. "Sylvain subscribes to the Gym of Life."

"Where's that?"

"It's what he calls carrying out the daily activities of one's life," he replies wryly. "But once in a while, he'll lift some free weights and spend the entire next day moaning about it."

"Then you _definitely_ need to bring him so we can get him on a good routine," Adrien says around a mouthful of half-masticated green beans. Apparently, he'd cleared out the potato tier of his lunch box when Felix wasn't looking. "No man left behind in this family, ya know?"

Poised with cake halfway to her lips, Lysithea clears her throat pointedly, and Adrien hastens to correct, "No _person_ left behind."

She smiles and finishes shoveling cake into her mouth.

* * *

So, here's the thing: Felix still doesn't care about molecular biology.

But, here's another thing: he can't recall the last time he wanted to do someone proud the way he does Luzia and Adrien and even _Lysithea_.

Is this what Byleth was talking about when she advised him to put the people of a lab above his research interests? Did she mean to tell him that, with the support of a warm, caring community, he would feel the defeats less harshly and find it easier to push toward a solution rather than tossing in the towel?

What's more, he's beginning to realize that it's not only his labmates who have an interest in his success, either.

A single lab rotation only lasts ten weeks, and Felix had squandered so much of it being stubborn and prideful that it's only through a mad rush of experiments at the eleventh hour that his project takes a meaningful turn. He's falling asleep at his desk chair, cropping the last of the (successful) gel images, when he's pinged in the DIT_biochem2k19 group chat.

 **Lysithea:** @Felix, good luck tomorrow! Got the lab all hyped up for you, so you better deliver ;)

He snorts a laugh at that. Last week, she'd delivered a rockstar performance during her own presentation with the mass spec data they collected together and gave him a huge shout-out at the end for his involvement. He could've done without the picture of himself and Adrien sparring with serological pipettes, though. He wonders if he can dig up any good ('good') pictures of her for his own acknowledgments slide.

He begins to type out a reply hinting at such when the chat begins to move:

 **Marianne:** Your talk is fantastic, Felix. Just relax and do your best!✨✨  
 **Linhardt:** caspar wants me to send along a workout to help up your concentration  
 **Linhardt:** but i think you should just get a good night's sleep  
 **Linhardt:** your slides looked good. you'll do great  
 **Marianne:** Oh, you should absolutely slip in a picture of your darling Baby! No harm in earning some aww points💖  
 **Felix:** thanks for coming to the practice talk. it helped a lot  
 **Felix:** dw marianne i've got just the thing

As the evening stretches on, similar messages from the rest of his cohort filter in.

Six months ago, Felix wouldn't have expected to give a tiny rat's ass about words of encouragement from mere classmates. But then again, these people are hardly strangers to him anymore: they've been to his home, come to his wedding, and witnessed him drunkenly doing "karaoke" of the song Tequila at the holiday party.

(There is no physical record of this.)

(He thinks.)

(…)

(He should investigate to be sure.)

And maybe Sylvain hasn't played a direct role in all of that, but he's always wanted Felix to have more than Felix thought he needed. So when Felix leaves his talk the next day feeling on top of the world; when Lysithea elbows him in the side afterwards and whispers, _I won't lose to you_ ; when Luzia toasts them at the rotation wrap-up dinner for their exemplary achievements over the short 10-week period—it's Sylvain he's thinking of.

They've both been so busy recently that it feels like they've barely had the time to have a real conversation. But right now, Felix wants nothing more than to be home, talking to his husband about everything and nothing at all.

The one flaw in this plan is that Sylvain isn't home when Felix gets there. Felix realizes that he hasn't heard from him via text all day either. What could possibly be going on at work that he can't spare a moment for—

 _Oh_. That's right.

Felix has one shoe half-pulled off his foot when he jolts with disbelief that he'd forgotten that today is the day of the big Gloucester-Riegan wedding. In some corner of his mind, he knows that Sylvain has been blabbing to him about it all week, but the only detail of their conversations he can really recall is Lorenz Gloucester getting cold feet over his dress.

He lets the shoe fall from his hand onto the floor. Baby tilts her head up at him.

"Mwrow?" she asks.

He stares at her for a moment, then reaches out a hand to rub her between the eyebrows. "Yeah." 

* * *

Footsteps on the stairs.

Several seconds later, their bedroom door creaks open.

"Hey, you're still up," Sylvain says as he walks in. He looks tired, but when his eyes land on Felix, a smile slips over his face like second nature.

Felix sits up from his half-reclined position in bed and throws aside his Switch. En route to shedding his clothes into the laundry basket, Sylvain drops by for a kiss, and Felix stretches up to meet him halfway.

"Hey," he whispers, lips brushing over the rough stubble around Sylvain's mouth. He runs the pads of his fingers against the grain of it on his cheek. "What happened to the beard?"

"She was getting clingy," Sylvain says flatly.

It takes Felix a beat to get the joke. "Ha ha. No, really."

Sylvain shrugs. "Didn't think you'd miss it."

Brows knitting, Felix shoots him a bewildered look. "What?"

He's always been perfectly transparent about his feelings toward Sylvain's beard. He likes the soft rub of it against his neck when Sylvain nibbles strawberry fields down his throat; he likes the way he can feel Sylvain everywhere between his thighs when he uses his mouth on him. He likes that it makes Sylvain look older, more rugged. He loves that Sylvain likes the way it looks on himself.

It downright dumbfounds him when Sylvain says, "Well? You kept poking fun at it when we were eating tacos the other day—something about how I could make a bonus taco with all the stuff that got stuck in the hairs. And yesterday, you came home when I was pawing through the drawers for the measuring tape and hollered, 'Someone get this homeless guy out of here!'"

The past week has blurred by in such a hysterical whirlwind that Felix can't even remember _eating_ tacos, never mind whatever off-handed comment he tossed out over them. He could see himself making a jab at Sylvain about being unkempt, possibly, just because he's such a clean freak who gets on Felix about being greasy sometimes, but the thing about Sylvain looking homeless? Why would he have said something so needlessly _mean_?

"Are you sure you heard me right?" Felix asks, picking at his earring.

Sylvain raises his eyebrows but otherwise remains unreadable. Removed. Felix hates it. "I could grow it back if you prefer."

"That's not—" Felix shakes his head. "I liked the beard. But you also look hot the way you are."

He lets his eyes roam over him, admiring the way the wine-red button-down shirt stretches taut over his broad shoulders and thick-plated chest. He puts his hands on him and smoothes his palms over the hard-soft expanse of his body, dragging his fingertips over the lines of his stomach.

His explorations stray south, and he's just untucked Sylvain's shirttails from his black dress pants when his hands are captured and returned to his lap. Sylvain continues on his way toward the hamper, working the buttons on his shirt as he goes.

Felix sits in place, unsure of what just happened. He's waiting for an explanation, or just _something_ other than the strange silence that shrieks across the distance between them.

But nothing comes.

Sylvain scoops Baby off the floor when she streaks past him and plops her onto the bed. She turns a few circles before deciding that this atmosphere is unconducive for relaxation, and she bolts out the door again.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

The room has never felt so big.

Felix tugs harder at the barbell in his ear, watching Sylvain undress facing the wall. He is talking to Sylvain's back when he says, "So. How was the wedding?"

"It was really nice," Sylvain replies.

"Did he—the Gloucester guy, I mean—did he wear the dress?"

"Yeah," Sylvain says, still to the wall. "Lorenz was having a hard time of it—with his dad and the media attention and whatnot—so it was pretty up in the air until the very last minute. But Claude got through to him in the end. I think they're going to be happy together."

Felix's attention catches like a snag on his tone.

 _I think_ they _'re going to be happy together._

It's the way Sylvain says that last bit, like a line drawn.

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

Sylvain hesitates briefly, mid-motion of shucking his undershirt. He finishes pulling it over his head. "Sorry, I'm just tired. It doesn't mean anything."

More silence.

In the borderlands between night and day, there is this moment. Every freckle on Sylvain's shoulders is a full-stop, and Felix is choking on the half-formed thoughts that fail to leave his tongue. He wants to push Sylvain into spitting out what he seems to think the Gloucesters have that they don't; he wants Sylvain to ask him how lab meeting went—he knows he remembers.

Neither of those things happen by the time Sylvain leaves for the shower. Felix spends a good moment staring at the heap of dirty clothes in the hamper, with the distinct feeling that he's been stripped off and left behind, too.

* * *

The next morning, Felix wakes up feeling shitty. On the pillow next to his, Sylvain's face is so peaceful with sleep that looking at it makes the dregs of anxiety in his gut combust in blue licks of anger. The innocent splay of those pale lashes _infuriates_ him.

After the weeks he's spent facing his weakness and conquering them with flying colors, why should he be made to feel this way? A thousand and one people proud of him for what he's accomplished, and none of them his own husband.

So _what_ if Felix had been a little careless with his words this past week? He would've apologized had he been given the opportunity, but Sylvain just had to go and shut down on him like they were strangers passing transiently through each other's lives.

Felix clenches his hand into a fist, feeling his wedding band cut into his finger. If he weren't so goddamn in love with this man, he'd punch him in the stomach.

But he loves him.

And it makes him sick just thinking about anyone laying their hand on him like that ever again.

He uncurls his fingers, slides them across the sheets toward Sylvain's cheek. It's unfair that he still has to be so fucking pretty even when Felix is pissed at him. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ Felix grazes the back of his knuckles over the line of his jaw. He starts when Sylvain lets out an incoherent mumble into the pillow.

At first, Felix thinks he might just be talking in his sleep again. But then, his eyelids flutter like butterfly wings trying to catch wind for the first time, and he whispers, "Fe…"

With his voice thick and gravelly, the nickname sounds the way it does when he _wants_ him. Felix has to remind himself that that's only because Sylvain's throat is still scratchy, having been jostled out of sleep only a half second ago. He wishes that the desire was real and the unrest in his chest the artifact. If only Sylvain would pull him into his body, the shared heat of their skin would convince Felix of that.

The question is out of Felix's mouth before it passes through his brain: "Do you want to have sex?"

Sylvain's eyes fly open. His pupils are dilated all the way to the rim, but Felix can tell from the slash of his mouth that it's not the work of arousal.

Besides, he's taking far too long to answer.

"I have to go to work soon," Sylvain says eventually, as if he's never fucked Felix in the entryway on his way out the door.

Felix's entire body radiates with indignation once again. A flat "okay" is all he manages before rolling out of bed.

As he beats the shit out of his sparring dummy out in the yard, sex transitions in his mind from an act of intimacy to a sticking point. He's never been one to go down without a fight. After he works off enough frustration, he heads back inside to bring it up again.

"Running late for work!" Sylvain says, pulling on his shoes.

And then, later _: Sorry, darling, I'm so wiped I might fall asleep sitting up._

_Maybe Tuesday night?_

_I haven't showered yet_.

 _We gotta feed Baby_.

Felix is losing his mind.

"What the hell." He grits his teeth. "It takes thirty seconds to feed Baby. And it's not even five yet! She'll be hungry again by ten if we feed her now."

He glowers at the sway of Sylvain's hips as he saunters toward Baby's bowl, undeterred by Felix's protests. Baby follows three steps behind him, peering back at Felix like, _Is this a trap?_

Goddess help him if he knows, either.

"Fine!" Felix declares, throwing up his hands. "I'm going to go jerk off upstairs!"

Bent over Baby's kibble container, Sylvain tosses a little wave over his shoulder. "Have at it, my sweet."

This hits a trigger behind Felix's ribs, and the feeling of unease detonates into pure _spite_. He stomps the entire way up to their bedroom, the floorboards heaving under the weight of his humiliation. He slams the door shut and kicks off his jeans in a sharp trajectory across the room.

He plants his ass down on the side of the bed. He's lost the semi he'd worked up earlier watching the muscles in Sylvain's arms bunch and bulge as he worked the free weights, so now he's just an angry lump with no pants, shirt still on, and dick hanging limp against his thigh.

He collapses back against the dark grey bedspread, hair fanning out in an unruly mess around his head and glares up at the ceiling. Three weeks. They haven't had sex in three weeks. Even during their various long-distance stints throughout the years, they had sex more than that over the phone.

Are they due for a dry spell? Is that a thing that every couple is bound to go through? He supposes there's been times in the past when it'd taken more effort to get them both over the edge, but they've never gone so long without even _trying_ before. Is it really too much to ask for a quickie in the shower? For a hand job by the kitchen sink? For Sylvain to kiss him and strip him and consume him like he craved a piece of his soul?

Fuck.

Whatever.

Maybe the problem is Felix. Maybe he's the freak for burning so hot and so long all this time for one man. The _only_ man he's ever known this way.

He's never wanted anyone else. He's had the same man thousands of times, but every time still feels like a discovery: the slightest nuance in the taste of his cock on Felix's tongue, in the way he stretches Felix open, the pressure of his hands and how they caress Felix's skin like he is a thing to be ravished or revered. 

And the scent of him.

Goddess.

When Felix lets his head loll to one side, his eyes catch on the black tank abandoned at the foot of the bed. He tugs it toward himself and presses the soft, worn fabric to his face. It must be the shirt Sylvain worked out in; the material is still damp and smells like fresh sweat. When Felix burrows his nose deeper in it, the gentle musk of Sylvain's scent overwhelms his senses, bringing him as much comfort as excitement. 

With his free hand, he holds himself in a loose grip, giving his reinvigorated cock a couple of fast strokes. He's already at full-mast, hips bucking into his hand, when he realizes he has no idea what's even in his spank bank anymore.

As a teenager, faceless bodies alone were enough to get him going. Broad, athletic physiques with well-defined abs and thick thighs.

In college, Felix had plenty of opportunities to thirst after Sylvain before they started dating. Sylvain would casually strut around their shared apartment, humming as he threw together a smoothie or bagel sandwich, and he'd offer Felix half like he didn't know that Felix craved his hand far more than what he held in it. And then, there was a new thrill and tension in looking at Sylvain and understanding that this would be the body that he'd open his own to.

Their first time was Felix's first time. Sitting across from each other on Felix's twin bed, they'd discussed the logistics of the act beforehand. Or rather, Sylvain talked while Felix picked at a string in the comforter.

 _Hey_. Sylvain had reached for him, guiding his chin up gently so that when their eyes met, it was in fractures of light, in transitions of color. _More than anything, just talk to me, okay? If something doesn't feel right, if it hurts, we're going too fast, too slow, —_ he smiled— _if I'm right where you need me. I want to know all of it_.

 _What if I don't want to talk_?

Sylvain slid his hand into Felix's open palm. Up their clasped hands traveled over Felix's thighs, stomach, chest; fingertips brushing the peaks of his nipples through his shirt, kissing the taut skin over his collarbones.

 _Then show me_. _Take my hand and show me how to touch you_.

His head was between Felix's thighs when he peered up at him through his eyelashes, the coy bastard, knowing full well how beautiful he looked there. Felix squirmed as Sylvain spoke puffs of air over the red, moist head of his cock: _How do you like it? Here? Like this? More?_

In an instant, Felix yanked him up by the hair and crushed their lips together, finding out only then how hard Sylvain's heart was slamming up against his chest. Felix thought he was the only one.

 _I just want you_ , he said _._

There was a finger inside him, then two, then Sylvain was the fire inside him, the warmest part of him. Teeth sank into his neck and fingers curled around his biceps; the wet cavern of Sylvain's mouth closed around his nipples, then tongue stroked tongue. They rocked and shifted and kissed and climbed until—

Felix gasps, abs tightening as he felt himself approaching orgasm. But when he lifts his legs to wrap around the body meant to be rising over his, he catches nothing but air. The hand stroking him is only his own, and when his sword callouses rub over the straining tip of his cock, he comes, but it's so puny and pallid that he's left more discontented than when he began.

He wipes himself up with a tissue and pulls his pants back on, still tingly and half-hard between the legs. He curses, blasting himself for being such a sissy over sex. It's only sex. Not the loneliness that aches in his core. That would be the more pathetic alternative.

So, he keeps his attention trained on getting his quick fix, drawing his shoulders up to his ears as he slinks down the stairs. When the foyer comes into view, he spots Sylvain grabbing his keys from the hook and patting himself down for his phone and wallet.

"Where're you going?"

"We're out of milk. You want anything?"

"Yeah," Felix says. "I'm going to blow you after you get home."

Sylvain turns slowly, blinking up at Felix. "Oh. You just…decided that?" 

"Yeah." 

"I don't think I'm in the mood."

"Well, get in the mood. You've got time."

"I…" Sylvain frowns. "But I just told you that I don't want it." 

Felix crosses his arms. "Why not?"

" _Why not_?" Sylvain echoes with an incredulous huff of laughter. "Felix, I can't just go from zero to sixty. We've both been so busy that we barely touch each other."

"I've been _trying_ to touch you."

"You've been trying to initiate sex," Sylvain corrects. When Felix waves open his arms like, _Yeah?_ _That's the point_ , Sylvain sighs in this long-suffering way that would inspire rage in even the most patient of men. (Felix wouldn't even rank in the top 6 billion.) "If you wanna cuddle or watch something together first when I get back, we can see where that goes, but I'm just not feeling sexy right now."

"You're _always_ feeling sexy!"

Sylvain's eyes narrow. "No, Fe. I'm not."

"…Is it me?" Felix fists his frumpy hair. Has his greasy mop finally become a deal breaker? Or is it the jeans he's worn four days in a row? He's maybe gained a few pounds from missed morning runs and stress-eating Lysithea's cakes, but it's not that noticeable.

Is it?

Sylvain's still frowning, but his stance softens. "It's not you, sweetheart."

"Then why don't you want me?"

"Of course I want you."

"Not right now, you don't."

"I do. Maybe not in the way that you need, but." He kneads the back of his neck, rolling his head in an arc. He's speaking to the floor when he says, "It's just that every time I go to talk to you, you tell me to go away."

"I don't do that!" Felix snaps back defensively.

Sylvain takes a breath, closes his eyes, then slowly reopens them, lifting his gaze to search Felix's face. He grimaces when, evidently, he doesn't find what he's looking for. "I don't mind, normally," he begins, voice so even that Felix knows he must be getting angry too, "when you need to use sex to blow off steam; I want to be there for you. But right now, I don't want to have sex this way."

"What way?"

"Don't you feel it, too? That we haven't been connecting?"

A knife of guilt drives between Felix's ribs. One side of his brain is up in arms, swords drawn. The other side is shouting at the first to stop being a shithead but gets stabbed to death by a rogue assassin, bearing the flag of Felix's bruised ego. "What, you don't wanna have sex unless it's _making love_?"

Sylvain stares at him. "Wow. You're incredible."

They're words Sylvain's said to him a million times before, without a bitter pill of laughter lodged in his throat. Felix looks away. "What's wrong with just wanting to have sex?"

"Without the right feelings?" There's a desperate edge to the question. "Then, it's no different."

"Different from what?"

Sylvain stands by the door wordlessly, hand trembling around his keyring. When Felix chances a look up, the answer is there on his face.

_It's no different from all the others before you._

Emotion rises, thick in Felix's throat. "Fuck." He scrubs his hands over his face, shoulders falling. " _Fuck_. I'm such an asshole."

He hears Sylvain say, in that same awful, even tone, "I am, too. But I don't want to be that way towards you."

Felix shakes his head behind his hands. "Shit." He can't bring himself to look at Sylvain. "I'm sorry. I don't mean any of that."

The keys Sylvain was holding land with a jangle on the particleboard of the shoe cabinet. Brown boots arrive at the bottom step of the stairs, and butterscotch peeks through the cracks between his fingers. Sylvain wraps his fingers around Felix's wrists, but he doesn't actively pry away his hands. He's simply waiting for Felix to let them fall. When Felix relents, head still hung in shame, Sylvain seats them both on the stairs.

"Sorry," Felix says again.

It feels like an eternity before Sylvain replies, quietly, "It's okay."

Felix swallows. "I don't know why I do that."

"We're both pretty stubborn."

"I don't want you to go away," Felix says, picking at a tear in his jeans, "and I don't hate your beard. I love it. I love you. I fucking hate that I hurt you and can't stop doing it."

Sylvain lays a hand over his knee, squeezes. The stiff shape of his grasp gives away the fact that he's still trying to temper his feelings. "I think," he begins, at length, "it would take two very well-adjusted people to be together for as long as we have and never hurt each other in some way. And we're probably not...that."

"Well, it sucks." Felix scowls.

"Kinda, yeah," Sylvain agrees, with a nod. He jostles Felix with his shoulder. "Hey, I'm sorry, too."

Felix rears back in surprise. "About _what_?"

"You're beautiful and sexy, and I'm sorry that's not the way I've been making you feel around me."

"Don't," Felix grunts. "Why the hell would you want to make me feel good when I say things that make you feel like shit?"

Sylvain shrugs. "To be fair," he says, "I've been feeling pretty shitty regardless of you."

He's taken his hand back and the slightest shift of his body angles him more toward the front door than Felix. His left arm feels like a protective shield.

It makes Felix want to plunge past it all the more. "What's been going on?" 

"Work stuff. And photo comps. I've been hitting a brick wall with deciding what to submit."

"Yeah, you've been saying that." Felix bites his lip.

Sylvain sighs again, but this time it's an act of melodrama. "And you've been so busy with your _new_ _friends_ …"

"They were helping me with my project! We aren't just hanging out!" Felix protests.

This makes Sylvain laugh. "It's fine to hang out with your friends, sweetheart."

"But it's not like they matter more than you!"

"You're happier with your own sphere outside of me," Sylvain says, then pinches his lips together. "It's put me a little on edge, though, I think. Made me more sensitive to things I wouldn't usually blink twice at."

Felix scrunches his nose in bafflement. "Why, are you _jealous_?"

"I mean, you've got a pretty little girl making you cakes…"

"That I bring home for _you_ to eat," Felix says. "And I'm so fucking gay, I can't believe that'd bother you."

Sylvain smiles wanly. "It doesn't, really. Your friends are good to you, and I'm glad that you have that." Felix watches him yank distractedly at his ring, twisting it around on his finger. "It's more the fact that _I_ don't have a universe outside of you here, so when you're not around, I'm just kind of…" He shrugs. "I don't know."

It takes Felix a good minute to try to wrap his head around this.

For as long as he's known him, Sylvain's been surrounded by his childhood friends, who are closer to him than family, and Mercedes, who's practically adopted him as little brother #2. The impression of Sylvain as a social creature surrounded by the type of boisterous friendship and camaraderie Felix never had growing up is so strong that he never considered Sylvain would struggle to rebuild that type of bond after they moved here.

When they'd had that barbeque last summer, Felix had admired the easy way Sylvain fluttered from person to person. Looking back at it now, he wonders if maybe there's some innate hollowness about the indiscriminate friendliness of the naturally charming and handsome—a mote that forestalls the entry of good acquaintances into the fortress of true friendship.

"What about Hilda?" Felix asks. "Sounds like you guys get along."

"We have fun on the job, but she was born and raised around here so she's got her own crew of people she's known forever. She's asked me a couple of times if I wanna tag along, so I probably could get in with them if I want. But honestly? When I get off work, I'm just excited to see you."

In spite of himself, Felix feels a small smirk tilt his lips, warmth bleeding free inside of him. "Yeah?"

Sylvain rolls his eyes. "You _know_ that; don't fish for compliments!"

"I don't fish!"

"You're the biggest fish!"

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"I'm just _trying_ to tell you"—Sylvain pokes a finger into Felix's thigh, and Felix bats it away, ticklish—"that I've been a salty bastard over you having fun with your new friends and doing kickass science things when all I wanna do is make fun of trashy dating shows with you in our underwear." He takes a breath, and finally, looks properly at Felix again. "I want you to have your own people, but it's just hard when I only have you."

"I don't want you to only have me," Felix says. Maybe at one point, he thought that's what he wanted—to be someone's _everything_ —but some things over the past few months have given him a new perspective. "For one thing, you need friends for talking you out of murdering me for leaving my socks everywhere."

"So you _are_ aware of the sock situation."

"I am aware," Felix says, throwing him a pointed look, "that you passive-aggressive talk to my stray socks only when I'm in the room to see you do it."

"They always look like they're about to walk off on their own after you take them off! What's wrong with asking the wittle ones where they're headed?"

" _That_!" Felix humphs, crossing his arms. "Anyway."

"Anyway."

" _Anyway_. Go hang out with Hilda. Meet new people."

"You're okay with that?"

"Yeah." Felix tries a smile and feels relief plummet through him when Sylvain returns it in the double. "Relieve me of some of my center-of-your-universe duties."

Sylvain traces a finger along one of the crackled lines of gold on Felix's ring. "Not what you signed up for?"

Felix flips his hand and links their fingers. "I signed up for the whole shebang."

"Shebang is a funny word," Sylvain says, tilting his head. "Maybe not more than _segue_ , but…"

It takes a moment for Felix to get what he's talking about. Then, he groans. "How the hell do you still remember that?"

"Steel trap of tiny Felix things." Sylvain taps his temple with a grin. It dims a little when he says, "That presentation you did. I never asked about it."

Shaking his head, Felix leans into his side. "It went well, but I don't even care anymore."

All of that seems so insignificant now in light of the apprehension born from the night that followed and the sickening fear he's been harboring for a week, absolved at last.

"Still, I'm proud of you. You're so amazing," Sylvain says, the tenor of his voice warm and wonderful. It's the only way Felix ever wants to draw those words from his lips from now on until forever.

Beyond the glass patio door, over the garden they planted at the beginning of spring, the sky is streaked cotton candy colors. When Felix slips his arms around Sylvain's neck and fits their bodies together, he's comforted by the sweet, clean scent of pears and aloe. It's forgiveness and acceptance and more tenderness than Felix will ever know what to do with.

They stay this way even when the house fills with nightshade and they are two ghosts, clinging together in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout-out to @quietgal's galaxy brain for "plastered felix does 'karaoke' of tequila at the holiday party"


	7. Chapter 7

In the following weeks, things feel like they're back to normal. Better than normal, even.

They share a laugh—embarrassed on Felix's part, delighted on Sylvain's—every time Felix falls for the Bae/Fé name trap. They find packets of mixed wildflower seeds at the grocery store and plant them around the veranda, joking that their gardens matching their wallpaper is taking the curtains matching the drapes thing to a whole new level. Felix offers massages for Sylvain's neck cramps, and Sylvain brings Felix his Almyran pine up to the study. They haul up an extra chair, where Sylvain avidly turns the pages of his latest spy novel next to Felix, who alternates between studying for finals and brainstorming potential thesis projects to pitch to Luzia. He hasn't formally discussed joining the Amis lab with her yet, but he's fairly confident that she would take him as a student.

But every night, the lights go out eventually.

They don't have sex. After their big blow-up, Felix doesn't see how he can do anything but wait for Sylvain to initiate without making a lie out of his own apologies. They let their mouths and hands wander, and when they grind up on each other, Felix can feel Sylvain's interest stirring against his hip, but nothing ever comes of it.

Even more concerning still is the insomnia that follows, the severity of which is a pretty reliable gauge for Sylvain's mental state. Felix wants to comment on it in a real way, not just in drive-by conversations mumbled out in the middle of the night. He wants to ask if Sylvain would consider therapy again. He stopped going after they moved out to Derdriu, said it was too much hassle to find a new therapist and figure out a way to pay for their service while unemployed. At the time, he'd been doing so well and seemed so pleased to feel like he could handle things on his own that Felix agreed they could see how things go.

Now, it's a year later, and almost every time Felix stirs awake in the middle of the night, Sylvain's not in bed by his side. He's stopped asking Felix to tell him about the ever-afters of fearless electron battalions. Felix gives him his space, tracing the ceiling texture with his eyes until they're fatigued and he falls back into a restless sleep.

Recently, he's been seeing dreams more nights than not. He doesn't remember them in any great detail when he wakes, but he thinks he might have a sword. He sometimes only has one arm. There's a war, and he's abandoned all his friends before they can leave him.

Tonight, it's a little something different. His subconscious trades the battlefield for a patchwork sky of shimmering mermaid tails and albatross sailing the path of vapor trails. Feet pinwheeling over the grass field in front of the Monastery, Felix runs so fast he swears he's going to take flight alongside his golden shield.

_Come on. Gotta keep running, right?_

He laughs, turning back to search for Sylvain's hand. Sylvain is exactly where he expects him, but the moment they touch, he is gone like a reflection in a pond.

Felix's hand hangs in the air, closing around nothing.

When he gasps awake, there's a throbbing pressure behind his eyes. He blinks it away and forces himself to take a couple deep breaths. He grapples for Sylvain in the dark, but as usual, Sylvain isn't there.

Fuck, _why is he not here_?

Felix presses a palm over his frantic heartbeat like he's searching for a pause button to stall the panic rising inside him. He trips out of bed and stumbles through the open bedroom door. From the top of the stairs, he can see Sylvain sitting on the bottom step. He's slumped over his knees with arms outstretched, face turned toward Wonder Wall.

He's looking, just looking.

Felix forces himself to take the stairs one at a time instead of throwing himself down the whole flight of them just to be by Sylvain's side that much faster.

"Hey. You stole my seat," he says, nudging at Sylvain's back with a toe.

Sylvain looks up at him. He smiles, a little. "I was here first."

Felix slides down next to him, leans into him. Sylvain puts an arm around his shoulders. They sit together in the cool silence of the night. The next morning, Felix wakes up under the covers without any memory of having climbed back up the stairs.

Soon enough, it's spring break. According to the senior students in his program, it's the last real vacation Felix can expect to take for the remainder of his grad school career. Right around the corner will be preliminary exams, then officially joining a lab, then qualifying exams, and no academic holiday will mean a thing when you're busting your ass trying to graduate.

Felix raises the idea of taking a little trip somewhere, but they couldn't decide on where, so the plan falls through. Felix takes the opportunity to get in contact with the iaido dojo Byleth recommended to him, while Sylvain busies himself with the photography competition he mentioned to Felix. He finally lets Hilda and her friends take him around town.

On the last Sunday before spring quarter begins, Felix has the townhouse to himself. He's doing some light cleaning to make up for the fact that he's been severely slacking on his share of the chores. He thinks it would almost be better if, from time to time, Sylvain would gripe at him to take out the garbage or do the dishes, but teasing exempted, Sylvain hardly complains at all.

This should be a good thing, right? No one likes a complainer?

Felix abhors doing any kind of cleaning that involves getting his hands wet, so he's putting off doing the bathroom and kitchen. Instead, he flits around areas that have become a dumping ground for loose papers, working from the living room up to their bedroom.

For all that Sylvain is a _clean_ person, he's not always a neat one. There's mountains of books and brochures and god only knows what scattered over and under his nightstand that Felix sorts through into _keep_ and _trash_ piles.

He isn't sure how comfortable he would be with Sylvain weeding through his shit like this, but Sylvain is so intentionally loose with his digital privacy that going through his things in their shared bedroom hardly even feels like an invasion of privacy. At first, Felix had felt awkward about having full access to Sylvain's phone, or being asked to read an incoming text message aloud for Sylvain when the phone was plugged in next to him. It felt even weirder to be trusted with the login information to Sylvain's personal email and told to just help himself whenever he wanted to check the tracking information for the cat food they ordered.

But Felix gets why he does it.

He can't say that he's never once feared that Sylvain would go back to his old ways, rediscover the soft bodies of girls into whom he can bury his self-hatred. But after all these years, on a night like tonight when Sylvain is late getting home, the only question swimming through Felix's mind is if Sylvain's safe, and how exactly Felix is going to rip him a new one when he eventually comes home. 

Because he _will_ come home.

Around 2AM, Baby, who was curled up with Felix on the couch, jumps at the piercing _ping!_ of an incoming text. He usually keeps his phone on silent at home; it's probably the first time she's ever heard the sound of his text tone. Felix rubs his eyes, wincing at the crick in his neck from nodding off in a weird position on the couch.

 **Sylvain (2:19AM):** _Shit, felix, Im so sorry!!!!!_  
 **Sylvain (2:19AM):** _I went driving along the coast after work and didn t realize my phone died_  
 **Sylvain (2:20AM):** _But I found it, the perfect shot_  
 **Sylvain (2:20AM):** _Youll love it_  
 **Sylvain (2:20AM):** _Its the most breathtaking thing_

Relief and irritation wrestle inside of him, complicated by the rough terrain of drowsiness. He knows Sylvain likes to go driving to clear his head. It's something he's done since his teens, he said, when he was wrapped up in the worst of things with his brother. But how could he not have at least thought to let Felix know of his plans ahead of time?

It's so inconsiderate, so unlike him.

Felix bites the inside of his cheek and repositions the phone in both hands. He's just started on a reply when another text comes in:

 **Sylvain (2:22AM):** _After you ofc, sweetheart. Always. I cant wait to show you_

Biting his lip, Felix reads the text two more times. Maybe censure can come later; Sylvain's already said he's sorry for not checking in. Felix hits the backspace all the way till the cursor crashes into the edges of the text box.

 **Me (2:23AM):** _me neither_  
 **Me (2:23AM):** _love you._

* * *

In hindsight, Now Felix should've known better than to leave things to Later Felix when Later Felix was getting his preliminary exam questions the next morning.

There are four questions in total, written by his three-member examination committee. He's startled to see Luzia in his list of examiners.

"They don't usually assign PIs that you rotated with to your prelim committee," Felix says around a mouthful of spaghetti that night. "That way, if you've already made informal plans to join their lab, they can't just go easy on you during the oral exam to make sure you pass." He washes down the pasta with a swig of water. "Fuck. Do you think that means Luzia isn't even considering taking me?"

Sylvain twists his noodles round and round on his fork. It takes more than thirty seconds of silence to make him look up. "Oh. Um. I'm sure that's not true," he says, but it comes out as more of a question.

Felix frowns. "Are you even listening?"

Sylvain, at least, has the decency to look appropriately chagrined when he mumbles a soft "sorry." Not that it matters when anxiety is an updraft rising fast inside of Felix.

"What's going on?" he asks. "I thought you'd be more...I don't know, present?—after last night. You never even showed me that shot you were so proud of."

"You were asleep by the time I got home and gone again before I got up."

"So? You could have texted it to me."

"You didn't ask." Sylvain is still playing with his spaghetti.

Felix lays down his own fork before reaching across the table to confiscate Sylvain's. "Seriously, what's the matter with you? Are you mad at me or something?"

In the absence of his fork, Sylvain starts playing with his ring. Swallowing down the urge to scream, Felix tangles his own fingers with Sylvain's, holding him.

"Hey," he gentles his voice. He reminds himself, _Careful. You're an asshole when you don't pay attention_. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"

He hates the carefully blank look on Sylvain's face. It says that he will talk but only to appease Felix, and it's not even going to be the whole story. "Same old, same old. Been hard taking pictures," he says. "Dunno why."

"You sure?"

Sylvain's mouth pinches defensively. "Yeah. I think I'd know that I haven't taken anything good. The one from yesterday was garbage when I looked at it this morning."

"No"—the urge to shout into an abyss intensifies—"I mean, are you sure you don't know why."

The few seconds that they spend staring at each other feel interminable. Felix watches Sylvain's Adam's apple bob as he swallows. If Felix could have one superpower, he would easily forsake invisibility or time travel or even supersonic speed in favor of being able to force Sylvain to spit out all the feelings he hoards away at the base of his throat.

"I just haven't been feeling like myself," Sylvain says finally.

Anticipation inflates Felix's chest. This is his chance to say what he's been thinking all these weeks. "Do you think you want to start seeing a therapist again?"

Sylvain shrugs. "Maybe."

Oh, and doesn't Felix know that _maybe_. "It helped you back at GMU, remember? You said you wanted to try handling it on your own for a while, but you don't have to keep doing that."

"I know."

"You could even…" Felix trails off briefly, then decides to push through, "try going back on your medication again." 

A sharp burst of laughter rips from Sylvain's mouth. Felix flinches at the sound.

"What?"

"Maybe you don't talk about me like that."

"Like what?"

Sylvain's lips thin to a blade and Felix feels his words cutting deep: "Like you're trying to _fix_ me."

"I'm only trying to help," Felix shoots back.

"Well, it's not _helping_ because this is just who I am!"

Felix is stricken by how his low, tender tones turn to thunder when he raises his voice. "Don't fucking _scream_ at me," he hisses.

Sylvain's jaw tightens. "Is this what you want for the rest of your life?"

"What are you talking about?

"Me. And all this goddamn— _baggage_ you have to put up with. Is it really even worth it to you?"

Felix's body is the center of a cyclone, hollowed out, and a flash storm pours into his eyes, flooding them so quickly he doesn't see so much as hear Sylvain's reaction: the sharp intake of breath, the almost audible _whoosh_ of tension escaping him in a rush.

He materializes at Felix's side, whispering, "Oh darling, don't cry," and pulls his face into his arms. "I'm sorry, baby…shhh…"

"I— _married_ you!" some blubbering moron who is not Felix cries, face smashed against the fabric of Sylvain's dark henley. "Doesn't that mean a fucking thing to you?"

"I'm sorry," Sylvain says again. His voice is pure, brittle devastation.

"…I know," Felix manages.

"I don't want to fight, love."

"Then don't—" A lump rises in Felix's throat, and he clamps down on his bottom lip, choking it back. "Don't you dare say that to me again."

"I won't. I'm sorry." Sylvain drops down to kneel by his side. "How can I make it up to you?"

Felix can't answer this question. He would sooner die than reply with the only thought spiraling through his head.

 _Take us back to a time when you weren't trying to leave me_.

* * *

Felix knows he's made a bad decision when he rolls on top of Sylvain later that night. He stares down into the dark shadows, tripping over his own heartbeat, until Sylvain kisses him.

He desperately seeks reassurance in the wet heat of his mouth, broad hands anchored over his hips, the solid weight of his body. And even if it doesn't feel quite right, doesn't feel quite all _there_ , too fast, too much teeth and tongue, clumsy and fumbling in a way they haven't been in years—it's okay. They just need to get through this and everything would be fine.

What they're doing is not making love; it's not even fucking. They're going through the motions of an act they know all too well and, right now, neither can recognize.

Felix is reaching for the lube for a fourth time when Sylvain's hand falls over his. Felix twists to look at him over his shoulder, questioning. They've been tumbling in the darkness for so long now that he can see clearly how his entire body shines with sweat, and his chest heaves with every ragged breath. His eyes are dark with something far removed from lust.

Sylvain runs a hand through his soaked hair. "Maybe we should call it a night."

"What?" The word is barely off his tongue before he feels himself cored, empty in the place where he'd finally been full and burning.

It feels like such a momentous thing, stopping now, like it's about more than just the sex. Or maybe it's momentous precisely _because_ it's sex. Because Sylvain's ruined him with this act that proves to him how wanted and deserving and needed he is, more than anything or anyone else—and now, he's taking it all back.

"I don't think either of us are feeling it tonight," Sylvain says.

There's lots of ways Felix can reply to that, but exhaustion is a houseguest that has overstayed its welcome by taking off its socks, changing the channel, and helping itself to a glass of bourbon from the fridge, so Felix says nothing. He squeezes his eyes shut.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Early morning tomorrow." Bullshit. "Let's just sleep."

Sylvain lingers for a minute more, trying to find Felix's eyes, but when Felix stubbornly refuses to give in, he gives up and rolls back toward his side of the bed. Felix pulls the covers over his body, sweat and lube and whatever other stickiness on his skin be damned, and curls in on his side, facing the wall. He waits for Sylvain to leave for the shower.

He doesn't, though.

An arm wraps around his blanket cocoon, laying heavy as rope across his waist.

"Night," Sylvain murmurs, his voice muffled against the comforter. "Sleep tight."

According to the medieval tales Glenn used to read to him, the strings of a bed back in those days had to be re-tightened nightly in order to prevent its collapse. This is one theory for the origins of the term "sleep tight". Felix wonders, as Sylvain pulls him ever closer, if they're both trying to keep the strings that bind them together from unraveling too.

* * *

**My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(8:01AM):** _All right! Time is up on all your dilly-dallying, mister! Mercie and I WILL march on Derdriu and there_ WILL _be a party and we_ WILL _bring cupcakes!_  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(8:02AM):** _I might ***consider*** making some of those maple bacon mini cups you like tho if you cooperate nicely._  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(8:02AM):** _And because I care about you, obvsly_ _💖_  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(9:24AM):** _Felix??_  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(9:25AM):** _Hello????_  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(9:25AM):** _I can see you reading these, you know!_  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(9:45AM):** _I know crowds make you grouchy, but it'll only be us, all right? I swear it._  
 **My BFF Annie** **✨✨** **(9:45AM):** _We just want to take part in your happiness, Felix._

"Fuck, Annie. Stop. Please."

Stunned silence shrieks down the line. Felix swears like a sailor, but rarely does he do it at Annette.

"...Felix?" Annette's voice is tentative. "What's wrong?"

A choked, pitiful noise escapes the back of his throat.

Where does he even begin? For one, he hurts all over. His thighs ache, his ass is tender, and his stomach is strangling itself to death. He doesn't know whether or not he slept at all last night. Around sunrise, he'd escaped to the study when he realized he was just torturing himself, numbering the knobs of Sylvain's spine over and over. He heard Sylvain leave for work about an hour ago, and his mind has been so fucking loud ever since.

"…I feel like I'm losing him," is what he ends up saying, and it makes him so angry, the way he sounds like he's on the verge of tears.

But somehow, Annette manages to sound even worse, which makes him feel more put-together by comparison. "Oh, Felix," she whispers, voice quivering. "What… What happened all of a sudden?"

Felix shakes his head, even though she can't see him. "It's not sudden. It's been months."

"And you didn't—" Annette battles with her words. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought things were getting better. That it was just a fight, or a phase, at most. I was scared that talking about it would make it real." His voice breaks on the last word.

"Goddess, Felix, are you…" He very obviously is, so Annette doesn't finish her question. "I'm so sorry you've been feeling this way."

Felix gnaws the inside of his cheek. "We were just so busy with things that I thought it was just that. I didn't realize how far we'd drifted until…" He presses a fist to his chest, like he can hold together the pieces of his heart if he applied enough pressure. "He asked me if I still wanted to be with him."

"Oh…" Annette breathes, voice heavy with sympathy. "Do you think maybe he was just looking for reassurance when he said that?"

Felix looks down at his feet. "Maybe. But when he said it, it felt like he was trying to leave." He clutches the phone tighter, presses on his chest harder. "And I can't, Annie. I can't lose another person."

"I know," Annette says because she does. She knows only all too well what it feels like not to be enough reason for people to stay. They've always had that in common. "You're not going to lose him."

"I don't know what I'd do if I did." 

"You're not going to," Annette repeats, with conviction that Felix doesn't feel. 

"You only say that because you don't know how bad it's been."

"Well…you could tell me about it?" she suggests.

And he wants to, he truly does. But his tongue is too fat for his mouth, and there's so much lodged in his chest, in his throat, he can't possibly unload all of it without feeling emptied from the inside out.

When enough time passes and it becomes clear they're going to need a rain check on him explaining the situation properly, she says, her voice a pair of soft mittens, "Felix, it'll take a lot more than a couple of rough months to change the way he feels about you."

Felix pulls his knees closer to his chest. "Things have fallen apart faster in the books you read."

"You mean my _shoujo manga_?" Annette sounds disapproving, like she expects him to know better than to say something so ridiculous. "Felix, you aren't 16 and in love with the cool, mysterious transfer student you know nothing about. He moved across the continent for you. And he's held onto that ring you're wearing for _years_. You know, he got that thing not long after he graduated when he had, like, no money."

Felix balls his left hand into a fist just to feel the ring indent his finger. "I don't know, actually. How do _you_ know that?"

"He showed the design to me and Ingrid to ask if we thought you'd like it. Ingrid told him that he was stupid for buying a ring he didn't know when he was going to use and 'what if Felix's carnivorous diet finally outpaces his metabolism; you can't even get a titanium ring resized.'"

"That's rich, coming from Ingrid," Felix scoffs, but his heart isn't in it at all.

Three years. Sylvain's had the ring for _three years_ , through living apart when he was working those contract gigs—did he take those jobs to pay for the ring?—and uprooting his whole life to follow Felix to a city that had nothing in store for him, just _waiting_ all that while because—

"You're _it_ for him, Felix. And he's it for you, too. Anyone can see that." Annette pauses, letting that sink in. "It sounds like life's been hard on you both, and it's not easy being okay with another person when you're not okay on your own. But try to focus on the good? Plan something fun together! Time flies and soon it'll be summer! And then your marriage anniversary! Get away from everyday life for a while and breathe."

Felix considers this, tracing the crackled pattern of his ring with his eyes. The night they discussed wedding options, he'd told Sylvain that rather than throwing a big party, he wanted to go places together with him. But how long has it been since they actually did that? Was the last time New Year's at Garreg Mach? And then the kite festival before that?

When was the last time they even had a proper _date_?

Annette's right; they've just been in a rut. That's nothing new in the natural ebb and flow of a long-term relationship. It only feels so much more earth-shattering now when it's their marriage they're trying to protect.

"A trip might be good," he replies. His heart is overworked and exhausted, and there's a headache pounding between his eyes, but he feels like he's been given a sense of direction, at least. A compass to help point his way out of this mess. "Thanks Annie."

"Of course! What are friends for? Don't forget that you have people in your corner, okay?" He can hear the warmth of her dimpled smile when she says, "Love you, grumpy."

He smiles back, however weakly, into the receiver. "Love you, too."


	8. Chapter 8

The world doesn't stop spinning just because you're going through a marital crisis.

It's killing Felix that he has this other _thing_ hanging over his head—namely, the exam that decides if he gets to stay in his program—when all he wants to do is make things right with Sylvain. But he resolves not to rush this. He needs time to focus on thinking things through and sorting out his own feelings before he broaches the topic with Sylvain. It's not like either of them are going to be making rash decisions about their relationship during the ten-day period before his exam, so there's no reason to split his attention with fucking _gyrases_ and risk letting the pressure of the situation push him into doing anything else he might regret.

Sylvain doesn't try to talk about it either. In fact, they don't say much at all to each other except basic greetings and small talk about Baby, who is pitifully unnerved by the tension in the house.

The non-verbal communication between them, though, is oddly comforting. The bathroom door is still left unlocked when it's occupied. There's the minimal but intentional brush of toes— _toesies_ , Felix thinks, stupidly fond of the memory—in bed at night. The fridge restocked, the dishes put away, the laundry folded; all silent affirmations of _We're still a team_.

Then, there are the note cards. They're small and plain—not the big, colorful index cards Sylvain used to leave him in college—and instead of being pinned to the fridge, they sit under the fresh cups of Almyran pine that wait for Felix up in the study every morning. The messages are generic "You got this!" type sentiments with no sloppily filled in heart-marks, but at the end of each night, Felix sneaks them into the shoebox that houses every other card he's ever received from Sylvain. There must be hundreds of them: birthday and anniversary and holiday cards with dumb, sappy love letters spilling to the edges of every one.

The week flies by.

On the following Wednesday afternoon, Felix finds himself (inconspicuously) shaking in his boots under the careful scrutiny of his examination committee. Two hours pass in a blur, and the next time Felix's soul returns from orbit, he's alone again in the classroom, notes clutched in one hand and his brain a puddle of goo inside his skull.

When he takes out his phone to check the time, he sees notifications for a slew of messages in the group chat @ing him. Presumably, it's people asking after how he did. He pockets his phone without opening them.

He's trudging down the stairs to the atrium level of the Gloucester Center when he spots Marianne. She's sitting at one of the tables with her backpack in her lap and a book propped over top. He considers power walking past her, but he trips over nothing just as he reaches the bottom of the steps, scattering his notes everywhere. She startles at the commotion for a second before immediately setting aside her things to help chase down the flyaway pages that really took off across the smooth, polished floors.

She begins to ask, "Are you all ri—" and cuts off when she looks up at his scowling face. "Oh, Felix. Hi. Did you just finish with your prelim?"

"Yeah." Sweeping his notes back into a pile with his hands, he says, "It's okay, I got it."

She hands him the pages she's gathered. "How...did it go, if I may ask?"

He tells her.

"That's wonderful, Felix," she says, a smile evident in her voice. He's still glowering at his notes. He half-crumples them into his shoulder bag. "Congratulations."

"Thanks."

"If you'd like, Hilda and I are getting drinks with two of our friends downtown tonight. Would you like to come? We could celebrate."

Felix, who feels like he's got four arms and his pants on backwards, just wants to collapse into bed and sleep for eight years.

"I need to head home," he says.

"Ah, okay," she says, blinking at him for a beat before her eyes light up with realization. "Oh. Yes. Right. Of course. I'm sure you already have plans with Sylvain tonight."

He does not.

It hurts like a lance through the heart, but it's not like she would know better.

After parting ways with Marianne, he trudges toward the main entrance of the building, shoving open one set of heavy glass doors, then the other. The first gasp of the warm outside air blasts him in the face as he begins to drag himself down the concrete steps leading down to the street. He's just set foot on the sidewalk when he freezes.

There, standing in front of the entrance to the Gloucester Center, is Sylvain. He's leaned up against the side of the Testarossa with his arms folded over his chest and his hair glowing pink in the sunset. Even though it's his day off, he's all dressed up in a dark green spread collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and black jeans that hug his hips and thighs like a lover.

Felix wants to be his lover right then and there. It's several beats before he's able to find his step again and walk over to him.

Sylvain pushes up his sunglasses, unleashing the full strength of the smile he'd been hiding under there, and he waves that floppy, flirty little wave that Felix is helplessly endeared to.

"Why are you here?" Felix asks in an ungodly croak. He clears his throat.

Surveying Felix's expression, Sylvain hedges, "Well, that kind of depends… How did your exam go?"

"I passed."

Sylvain's smile broadens. "Unconditionally?"

"Unconditionally."

Sylvain hums like the word is music to his ears. "Then, in that case, I'm here to take my husband out for a night of celebration."

 _Husband_ , Felix repeats several more times inside his head. The word still sends a jolt through him.

"Like a date?" Felix asks, reaching past Sylvain for the door handle.

But instead of stepping aside, Sylvain places a hand over his hip and leans into him. Felix is surrounded by the fragrance of pears and aloe and the woodsy scent of Sylvain's beard oil. They're not touching anywhere else except at the one spot, but Felix feels him everywhere.

"Not like a date; it _is_ a date," Sylvain says, pulling open the passenger side door with a flourish.

His voice enters Felix's left ear and shoots through his veins, and inside of Felix feels like a city surging back to life after a blackout. Felix doesn't dare turn his head, keeping his eyes locked on the huge bouquet of wildflowers resting over the white leather seat.

"What's…that?"

"I'm trying to woo you," Sylvain replies. He's still so close but not close enough.

"I'm already…"—Felix grimaces at Sylvain's word choice—"…yours. You don't need to do that."

"Oh, I think it's imperative that I do. Rather, I _want_ to."

"With flowers?"

"I thought about leaving a pack of bratwursts on your seat but we're about to have dinner." Sylvain scoops up the bouquet and tosses it into the backseat. "Ready?"

Felix nods, grabbing the hood of the car to slide in. He throws a look at the flowers, then twists back toward Sylvain. "I never said I didn't want them. The flowers."

"Oh yeah?"

The hope on Sylvain's face is blinding, and Felix wants nothing more than to yank him down by the shirtfront and kiss him on the mouth. But after all that's happened, he's not sure where they stand on that. In an awkward last-minute decision, he grabs the body part closest to him—an arm—and because he can't bring himself to kiss the midpoint of his forearm like a creep, he just kind of…presses his face to it. Which is not any less creepy or weird.

He has never been more mortified at himself in his life.

"Thank you," he mumbles into one of the stark blue veins running the length of Sylvains forearm.

Sylvain doesn't quite _pull_ his hand back, but there's a part of Felix that maybe expected him to do something with his usual flair—cup Felix's jaw? smooth back his bangs? tug _Felix_ up for a kiss? Instead, he just let the hand fall from Felix's grasp. He whispers a soft "I love you" but doesn't wait for an "I love you, too" before walking back around to the driver's side.

As they settle in for the drive, Felix is still struggling to recover from the moment, but for the sake of whatever plans Sylvain's drawn up for them tonight, he decides that the best thing to do is just to push past it. "Where are we going?" he asks.

"Meats," Sylvain replies.

"Straight from the cow, or…?"

"Oh, you're a wild thing, you," Sylvain teases. "I was thinking I'd take you to that yakitori place on Main. Remember how we used to go there all the time when we first moved here?"

Felix turns to say that that sounds great, but he gets momentarily distracted by the car rolling past them in the opposite direction. It's that goddamn glossy black Bentley with the custom rims. Felix strains to see past the dark tinted windows, but it's gone before he can make out any of its passengers.

"Do you not want to go there?"

Felix's attention snaps back to Sylvain, whose face is pinched in concern. Felix must have been quiet for too long. "No! No, I do. Let's go."

Sylvain slips him a sideways glance as he pulls the car away from the curb. "Are you sure? We could do something else."

"I'm sure. I wanna do your plan."

"It's your night. You should pick. That was just an idea."

"Why are you trying to talk me out of going?"

"I'm not. It just didn't seem like you really wanted to go."

"But I do. I just told you I do."

Silence.

Beyoncé sings about broken hearts on the stereo.

"Okay," Sylvain says.

More Beyoncé.

Felix looks down at his knees, at the ring on his finger. He remembers every detail about that night. He wishes that Sylvain wouldn't be so quick to give up on the things that mean something to him.

The yakitori restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall with only eight table seats, so even though it's a Wednesday night, all the tables are occupied by the time they walk in. They're seated at the counter, where Felix's legs dangle from the stool he hops onto. Sylvain's feet, infuriatingly, touch the floor. Their knees brush under the bar, and Felix almost crumples the laminated menu between his hands when Sylvain mumbles a quiet "sorry".

Felix orders an assortment of skewers, including the giblets that Sylvain wouldn't touch with a wooden stick. Sylvain orders a karaage bowl.

"You didn't want something to drink?" he asks.

Felix shrugs. "Are you gonna get something?"

"I'm driving," Sylvain says, even though they both know that's not why.

"Then I'll pass. It's not fun drinking alone."

"Would you rather I get something?"

"Not if you don't want to."

"It's your night," Sylvain says.

Felix stares at him. "Can we make it our night?"

"What do you mean?" Sylvain asks, looking genuinely confused.

It's been an entire fifteen-minute car ride of mulling over this, but Felix still stalls a little before opening his mouth, afraid that he's read this all wrong. "That night we exchanged rings," he begins, "you said you were planning to take me here, then we'd go to Beni's for karaoke night, which is on Wednesdays. And now, you're working on getting me drunk enough to dance with you in Failnaught Park later, so…" He takes a breath, watching Sylvain work the ring on his finger with his thumb. "It just makes me think that this date's been on your mind all this time. And if that's true, I don't want it to be all about me."

The chatter in the restaurant swells in an uproar from something playing on the TVs, but Sylvain's focus on him is absolute.

"How do you know me so well?" he says, so softly that Felix has to read his lips.

"Because I love you, too," Felix replies. He taps his temple. "Steel trap of grand Sylvain gestures."

Felix isn't really sure who reaches for whom first. Their hands gravitate toward each other on the table and they kind of bat at each other for a bit, playful in a way that feels like a breath of relief, before their fingers tangle together. They stay that way until Sylvain tries to operate chopsticks with his left hand and ends up losing a piece of chicken under the counter.

"Let's switch seats," Felix says. "I can hold skewers with my left hand."

They talk about Felix's exam (a few of the more horrific moments are beginning to return to him); they talk about Sylvain's day (he remains torn over his contest piece). They talk then don't then do again, equal parts comfortable in silence as conversation. His friendship with Sylvain has always been this way, and it makes Felix a little sick thinking about how if anything were to happen to them, he would not only lose his husband but one of his very best friends.

When the check comes, Sylvain pulls out his personal credit card instead of the one linked to their joint account.

"I thought we agreed on this being our night," Felix says.

Sylvain smiles. "Doesn't mean I can't be proud of my husband for his hard work."

"Fine, but I'm getting the ice cream at Beni's," Felix says, then does a double-take at the card.

_Sylvain J. Gautier._

"All right," Sylvain agrees, easing himself off the bar stool. "Be right back, just gotta pee before we go."

Felix watches Sylvain walk toward the men's room, then looks back down at the card.

_Sylvain J. Gautier._

_Gautier._

He never got his name changed.

After all this time, Felix is a Fraldarius and Sylvain is still a Gautier.

_Does that make me a Fraldarius? Because I'd totally be down for that._

He'd sounded so sure of it back then— _excited_ , even. To Sylvain, "Gautier" is everything he despises about himself. His wealth. His status. His duties. His brother. His parents. So why is he still clinging to the name?

Apprehension stirs violently in Felix's stomach. He begins to regret the last bowl of rice he wolfed down.

"Felix?"

Sylvain is waving a hand in his face. Felix starts, nearly jumping out of his seat.

"You all right?" Sylvain asks.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good." Felix finishes sliding the rest of the way down onto his feet. "Ready to go?"

"Sure, lemme just do this real quick," Sylvain says, picking up the pen that came back with the two copies of the receipt. Felix watches him return the card to his wallet, do some mental math for the tip, and then scribble down his signature.

 _Sylvain J. Gautier_.

For the second time that day, hours go by without Felix being much aware of their passing. They must walk the three blocks over to Beni's. Sylvain must get a scoop of triple chocolate fudge ice cream in a waffle cone. They must watch someone mumble through 80% of "It Wasn't Me" at the karaoke bar. He knows all this because there is physical evidence of it in receipts, in phone videos.

His mind is a horrible, spiraling mess.

Either he's doing an impeccable job of concealing it somehow, or it's too dark in their area of the karaoke bar for Sylvain to get a proper read on him. Either way, he gets away with it without question.

When they leave Beni's sometime after 9PM, the cold night air slaps him awake, and he's engaged enough in that moment to register Sylvain asking him what he wants to do next.

"We don't have to stick to the plan," he reminds Felix. "We can go wherever."

Felix is drawing a blank on what that means. What do they like to do in this city, again?

"Or..." Sylvain trails off, tilting his head at Felix. His bright hair is backlit by the streetlamp, and a halo of light embraces the whole of him. "If you're tired, we could go home?"

Felix wants that. He wants his husband to take him home. He wants to be touched, to be held, to be made love to; to be reassured that Sylvain is his his _his_.

"Yeah, let's go home and watch a movie or something," he says.

Sylvain smiles and takes his hand. "Home it is, then."

They stroll along a now-familiar path in the city where they promised each other forever. Felix's hand is clammy in Sylvain's; he's hot with panic.

On the drive back, Passenger moans about letting go. Felix stabs the skip button hard enough to make his finger sting the rest of the way home.

When he unlocks their front door, pushing it open just a crack, Baby pokes her snoopy little nose through the gap. He nudges her back inside with a foot, and she huffs grumpily at him before realizing that he and Sylvain have come home together, hand in hand. She dances little circles around them, then, and rubs her face all over their calves, delighted to see that the humans are finally working it out.

 _You don't know the half of it_ , Felix thinks, bending down to fix her wild bedhead.

They change into comfy clothes and put on an action flick with plenty of badass martial arts sequences. They're snuggled under a fluffy throw blanket, limbs wrapped in a messy octopus tangle around each other. It's good; it's more than they've had all week. It helps calm Felix's nerves, but not enough. He has one ear pressed against Sylvain's chest like a seashell, and the sound of his heartbeat distracts him from the first twenty minutes of the film.

He spends the remaining seventy minutes trying to subdue the low burn of anxiety threatening to flare up into a wildfire.

 _I can fix this_.

_I am an adult and we are married and it's not that easy to give up on us._

_I can fix this_.

There's Annette's advice. The trip. He's not really ready to discuss it because he'd envisioned presenting Sylvain with a plan. He hardly ever takes the reins in planning for things like this, which is embarrassing because they're meant to be equals, so he wants to jumpstart the conversation with an idea.

He hasn't thought about this in any detail at all.

Where would they go? Somewhere in Fódlan? Overseas? What would they do? Sylvain likes to be a beach bum in theory, but he hates the heat and barbecues to a crisp under the sun in a matter of seconds. They could go someplace scenic. Maybe it'll inspire Sylvain enough to get him out of art block. But would that feel like too much pressure?

What else does Sylvain like to do?

What else?

What else?

"What's wrong?"

Sylvain's voice is a gentle murmur over the back of his neck, but it still somehow manages to alarm Felix into snapping a too sharp " _What_."

He winces at himself, running an apologetic hand down Sylvain's arm, the one that's looped around his waist. The film has ended without Felix noticing, and the TV scrolls through recommendations for what to watch next. The screen casts a soft glow over their bodies in greens and golds, an early gathering for autumn. Between that and the pleasant heat of Sylvain's hand stroking his hair, Felix should be cozy as a cat, near on purring.

But he bets Baby is not experiencing an inner-mind breakdown in her little hamburger-shaped bed.

"Sorry. What are you talking about?" he asks.

Sylvain kisses his temple, an unspoken _It's all right_. "That. You're tense all over," he says. "What's on your mind?"

It's as good an opportunity as any to broach the topic, even if he's ill-prepared. He can just ask Sylvain what he wants. There's nothing wrong with asking.

"What do you want to do for our one-year?"

Sylvain tilts his head. "One year?"

Felix cranes back his neck to search Sylvain's eyes. He's on the look-out for signs that Sylvain's playing dumb, which would be annoying right now for how worked up Felix is, but that would be forgivable at least. Just an ill-timed joke.

"One year," Felix says slowly, "of when we got married."

"Well, isn't that a while from now?" Sylvain replies.

The carefully blank look on his face is ten thousand pinpricks pressed slowly into Felix's skin. "Don't you think we should plan ahead if we're gonna do something big? It's our first _wedding_ anniversary. You love stuff like this."

"…Oh." When Sylvain withdraws his arm, it's not just the one side of Felix's body that feels cold. "Well, we didn't really have a wedding."

How…

…could they not have had a wedding?

Felix stares at him. "A wedding is where two people get married."

"You know what I mean. We didn't have a _real_ —" Felix watches Sylvain physically bite back the rest of that thought.

Suddenly, there is a fist inside of him, beating the shit out of his lungs. He barely registers Sylvain's "Well, what do you want to do?" before he's demanding, "So because we didn't have a _real_ wedding it's not worth celebrating?"

"What? Fe—"

"Is our—our _marriage_ worth less to you because we didn't have a big, fancy ceremony?"

Felix hates the way he stutters over the word _marriage_. He hates the way he hurled it out like it's a grenade, or something to weaponize.

Sylvain's eyes are huge, shell-shocked. "No! Of course not. Fuck, Felix. How can you even say that?"

"What am I supposed to think? You've been so stand-offish and weird but when I ask you if you're okay, you say it doesn't help you to talk to me. It's like—" Felix balls his hands into the blanket, and as hard as he's trying to steady his voice, it still comes out quivering: "It's like you've given up trying."

Sylvain's expression hardens. "It doesn't help me to talk about it with _anyone_ ," he says. "It's fine. We're fine."

" _If we were fine_ ," Felix explodes, "you wouldn't have asked me if I still wanted to be with you! It wouldn't be _weeks_ since the last time we fucked properly, and it wouldn't sound like a goddamn _concession_ to talk about doing something for our wedding anniversary!"

Sylvain is quiet for a long time. The only sound in the room is the static of the TV and Felix's labored breathing. Baby has hopped out of her hamburger bed, and she's striding toward them with her bright eyes flashing and tail held low. She's so visibly upset by all the shouting that guilt momentarily gentles the fury burning inside him.

Sylvain is looking down at her, too, when he admits, "I guess I just feel like we rushed into it all."

Every cell in Felix's body stills. "What are you talking about? You've never mentioned anything about being unhappy with the way we got married."

"I didn't want to start a fight." Sylvain reaches up to fist his hair, then shakes his head. "It's not a big deal. I just…sometimes wish we could've taken our time with it. Made memories to look back on when things get hard."

"When it gets hard to look at _me_ , you mean," says a thready voice Felix doesn't recognize as his own.

"Sweetheart, please. That's not—"

"Are you saying that we got married too soon?" Sylvain tries to reach for him, but Felix flinches away. He loves him so much that it's thinned his defenses down to a sugar brittle, and he'll crumble to pieces if Sylvain touches him right now. "That you regret it?"

In slow motion, Felix watches Sylvain tongue, roll, and lip his reply: "Like I said, I wish we'd gone about it a different way."

It turns out that Sylvain doesn't even have to touch him to break him.

Through a dizzying haze, he stares at Sylvain's hand. Sylvain is fiddling with his ring again, spinning it round and round with his thumb. The only way Felix knows his heart is still pounding is because he hears the roar of it in his ears. The back of his throat is bitter with braying laughter or bile; he doesn't know which it is and can't even care.

"I need to go," Felix says.

His legs feel like jelly when he stands, and he doesn't manage to move out of the way fast enough this time to avoid getting caught by Sylvain's hand. His grip is tight, unyielding on Felix's wrist.

"Go where? It's so late."

"I don't know," Felix says to the kitchen. The picnic table—that stupid fucking picnic table that's seen too much pizza grease and late-night talks and spontaneous bouts of passion—is covered in _crap_. Dirty cups and unopened mail and last quarter's slide stacks. He misses that table, even though it's right there. "I just can't stand being here with you right now."

He feels Sylvain's hold on him falter, tightening briefly before falling away. A shadow grows behind him. "I should be the one to go. I can take the car; it makes more sense."

Felix spins on his heel, fury flaring again as he pins Sylvain down with his gaze. "It's fucking _fine_. Even if came up, I know how to protect myself. I'm so much stronger than you, so I don't know why you insist on treating me like a goddamn woman with your stupid chivalry bullshit. Or do you just want something small and weak to protect? Because I'll never be that person for you or for anyone."

Felix watches Sylvain's face transition from slack-jawed paralysis to heart-sickening _hurt_. "I don't—" he says, in almost a whimper. "I don't think any of that. If you just need your space, what does it matter—"

"Because you can't fucking _do_ that to me!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Felix can see Baby glaring up at him. He hears her let out a long wail of distress before leaping onto the couch and into Sylvain's lap. Felix is losing his mind with how irrationally angry it makes him to see Sylvain’s hand settle over her ebony coat, or the way she melts into the comfort of his touch. Sylvain and Baby have each other at a time like this, while Felix is all alone.

_You are alone, and you will always be alone._

He doesn't know how to tell Sylvain that if he walked out that door right now, Felix will not be able to understand it as anything but an act of abandonment.

The confession is lodged in his throat, the enormity of it impossible to force through, so Felix lets the fall of the door do his speaking for him.

* * *

Felix has barely made it down the block before he regrets everything.

Piece by piece, all the things he said out of anger boomerang back to him. The shame of what he's done is almost enough to knock the wind out of him.

He knows that Sylvain is going through a hard time. It wouldn't even be an understatement to say that his entire _life_ has been just one big hard time. Felix is supposed to be there for him during the darkest of those days, but instead, there he was, drop-kicking him into the ravine.

He can't just go home and ask for forgiveness.

Not yet.

Not until he can figure out why he's so fucked up that his first instinct is to lash out at the people closest to him when all he's ever wanted is for them to stay.

His feet pelt down the narrow neighborhood streets until the path opens up to the broad avenues of downtown. He's short of breath, and all the thoughts are scrambled in his brain. Nausea rises through him, impeding his efforts to grapple for the answers he so desperately needs.

His brain is still catching up with what he intends to do when he rips his phone out from his sweater pocket and dials for the person that he's spent half his life sharpening his words on.

The line connects almost immediately. Rodrigue barely gets out a startled "Felix?" before the question comes bursting out of Felix: "Why am I such an _asshole_?"

A beat.

"Did...something happen?"

"No, that wasn't a rhetorical question! I'm actually asking you: why am I so—" A strangled noise escapes him as he tears at his disheveled braid. "—so, so _mean_?"

"...Felix, I don't think—"

" _Don't_. Just fucking _don't_. Out of everybody, you _especially_ don't have any right to deny it."

There's a sigh so long and belabored that it must reach deep into his father's soul and yank at its roots. A shuffling of papers. The rustling of fabric against leather. Felix imagines his dad on his worn, beige couch, reading briefings under the dim glow of the living room lamp.

"You were always a sensitive child," Rodrigue says, at length, "more prone to bursting into tears than acting out in rage or violence."

Felix growls impatiently. "What the hell does _that_ mean?"

"Glenn's passing changed you. You must realize this, too."

Felix grinds his jaw so hard he's surprised that he doesn't split a tooth. "He didn't _pass_ ," he hisses. "He was _killed_."

"Does it truly help you to think of his death that way?"

"It's the truth!" Felix shouts. "You should know; you fucking obsessed over it for years!"

A clattering of plastic. His father placing his glasses onto the coffee table, maybe. Another sigh. "It was the biggest regret of my life."

"Sending him out there?"

"Losing you, too."

Felix has no words for this.

"I'm sorry," Rodrigue says, a raspy sound over the ambient noise of the night, "that I left you alone."

Another wave of nausea rolls through him, and Felix grips on to the lamppost next to him for dear life, minimally grateful for the cold press of metal against his palm. "It doesn't fucking matter anymore. We're fine."

"Not if your anger still tears you up like this," Rodrigue says. He adds after some consideration: "We're clearly not fine, if you didn’t allow me to attend your wedding."

"We didn't even have a—" The words die in Felix's throat. _A wedding is where two people get married_. Wasn't that what he'd said to Sylvain?

"When I told you that I wanted to be there, I meant it sincerely," Rodrigue tells him.

Felix doesn't understand why the first time he's hearing anyone talk about this wedding is months after the fact. Ever since Rodrigue sent over the ring, he and Felix have been calling every Sunday. The calls last no more than fifteen minutes each time, but that's still _months_ ' worth of chances to say something.

The shock of this confession and the soft, simple sincerity of the statement send Felix's rage to a blustering boil. He scoffs, fingers white-knuckled around the lamp post now. "Why does it even matter to you?"

"I know I haven't been a very good father to you, but you're my son and—"

"As if you ever thought of me as a _real_ son like Glenn! What, did you want to give me away like a gir—"

"I want to be part of your happiness, Felix."

Felix's breath hitches in his throat.

_We just want to take part in your happiness._

Why do people keep saying that to him?

"I've missed so many years of your life, and I thought you might let me show you that I can be there for you, too."

Standing there on the sidewalk of downtown Derdriu, Felix's chest cracks in two along a fault line. His raw, beating heart is on display for the jolly weekday drunks of the city to gawk at. None of them do, of course. He is a stone in the river, and strangers simply flow around him.

"Fuck," he growls, wanting to punch something. There's the lamppost, he supposes, but it's his anchor right now, and he's tired of destroying things holding him steady. "Being pissed at you was so much easier. I should have never forgiven you."

Static prickles the air. "Do you think about him?"

"Do you?"

"It's been 11 years," Rodrigue replies, "and I still remember him packing for his first assignment like it was just yesterday."

Felix chokes on a laugh. "Well, isn't _that_ nice for you."

"Excuse me?" Rodrigue says, sounding truly flummoxed by this reaction.

Felix is just trying to find the strength to breathe. "People say really fucked up things when your brother dies," he squeezes out through the narrow opening of his throat. He knows he's shaking, but he's helpless to it. He hates that. "Bullshit like 'he isn't ever really gone because his memory will live on with you'. It's just not fucking true. The memories start to fade, and every time I forget something about him, it feels like I'm losing him all over again."

A droplet of water rolls down his face. Then another. Another.

There's some faraway part of his mind that registers the turn in the weather. It watches the scene unfold like a bystander: the rain falling from the sky, the words tumbling from his mouth.

"I used to connect the moles on his face like it was a game. He had a shitton of them, but there were these three small ones that formed a perfect triangle on his cheek. Every time he let me crawl under the covers with him, I'd trace them over…" Felix shakes his head, swallowing. "But I don't even remember which side they're on anymore."

The raindrops pierce his back, every one a poison arrow.

"The left." His father's voice is a quiet, heartbroken thing. "It was on the left side. The same as your line of three."

When the first sob rips from Felix, it threatens to take his soul with it. He shoves a hand against his mouth in a feeble attempt to keep himself whole. His shoulder crashes into the lamp post, and he slides all the way down until he's huddled on the wet sidewalk. The anger dims inside his ribcage and sucks away all the air in its dying gasp.

"Felix?"

He hears his father call out his name, but he squeezes his eyes shut.

"Are you okay?"

If he hadn't spent a whole decade of his life pretending that he hated his father instead of just admitting that he missed his brother, would he have been able to keep Glenn in his memory?

"Felix…"

He shakes his head violently, his drenched hair sending water pellets flying around him. "No, I can't—"

"Felix Fraldarius…?"

That's not his father saying his name. Felix's eyes snap open in the direction of the voice.

And there it fucking is. The Bentley he's cursed halfway across Fódlan and back—with Lorenz Hellman Gloucester in it.

The fact that he's fucking purple _all over_ makes him unmistakable. Violet eyes peer out at Felix through the open passenger-side window, soft with concern. The wind scatters rain into his car.

"You're Felix, correct?"

Dumb, Felix can only nod as he pulls himself back up to his feet.

Lorenz's lips curve in a gentle smile. "I thought that was you standing there, dear. Would you like to come in?"

When Felix continues to stare at him blankly, Lorenz makes a humbled expression. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, and I enjoyed the great fortune of having—"

"I know," Felix says.

Undeterred by Felix's brusqueness, Lorenz nods. "That makes things easy, then. Would you like a ride home?"

" _Felix?_ " his father's voice sounds from the phone speaker.

"Sorry, I'll call you back," Felix mumbles quickly before ending the call and pocketing his phone.

Lorenz is still peering up at him expectantly. "Well?"

"I can't go home," Felix says, wiping at his face like it even helps in the downpour.

Lorenz hums, considering. "Why don't you come take shelter from the rain? You're bound to catch a cold standing outside soaked like this."

"Aren't your seats leather?" is, for some reason, the first thing out of Felix's mouth.

"It's all right," Lorenz assures him.

"I can't afford to pay you back for water damage."

Lorenz gives an amused tinkle of laughter. "Just come in, please? We can lay down the sunshield over the seat if it would put you at ease."

Felix hesitates a moment more, but Lorenz makes no motion to leave without him. Exhausted, Felix gives in. "Where do you keep it?"

"In the trunk."

"Pop the door. I'll get it."

Rounding to the back of the car, he pulls open the trunk and snags the sunshield, which is folded neatly next to some surfing and scuba equipment in the velvet-lined compartment. He spies a green towel with white and gold geometric shapes on it and takes that with him, too.

Lorenz must have turned up the heat to full blast in the meantime because a hot current of air hits Felix's face when he bends down to smooth the sunshield over the seat. He does his best to ring out his hair and shirt before stepping in, but his socked feet make an offensive squelch inside his Converses when he flops in like a beached whale.

"Were you headed somewhere, dear?" Lorenz asks as Felix fumbles with the seatbelt. He's still getting water everywhere. He's a mess and he's destroying the interior of a car that probably costs more than the home he's renting.

"No, just...walking." Felix pulls at the wet cotton plastered to his skin. He's about to stuff the towel under his shirt when he thinks to ask, "Can I use this? I found it in your trunk."

Flipping on the turn signal to merge back into traffic, Lorenz slides a quick look in his direction. "Oh, of course. That one belongs to Claude, if you don't mind. It has been laundered, of course."

Felix mumbles a word of thanks before scrubbing the towel over his face, working his way down his neck. His chest and stomach are dry for the two seconds after he drags the towel over them before his drenched shirt gets them wet again. But still, the relief of relative dryness and warm air blowing over his face lull him into a comfortable haze. It takes a minute for Lorenz's words to trickle into his brain.

"Claude...von Riegan. Chairman Riegan's Almyran grandson."

" _Half_ -Almyran. There is just as much Fódlan in him," Lorenz says. "Did you hear of it from Sylvain?"

"Yeah, how else?"

Lorenz raises an eyebrow. "Are you not much interested in politics?"

Felix blinks, staring out at the road. "Is there a knife at my throat?"

This startles a laugh from Lorenz, who feels it necessary to then remind him, "You must know that it is one's civil duty to be engaged in the affairs of their government."

"To know what country we're going to war with next?"

"Yes," Lorenz says with a nod, "and to vote into office those who champion peace instead."

"Like Claude von Riegan?"

"Indeed."

"Is that why you married him?"

Lorenz drums his fingers on the steering wheel, quiet for a moment. "You know, you're exactly as Sylvain said."

The mere sound of Sylvain's name hurts like a sword through the gut.

He doesn't particularly want to know what Sylvain's been saying about him to Lorenz Gloucester. "So?" he prods instead. "Is that why?"

"We've known each other for a number of years now, but formally began seeing each other after he moved to Fódlan for university," Lorenz says. "We hadn't planned on being wed quite so soon, but…" Outside, the rain dies down to a drizzle, as if quieting to hear him speak his calm, eloquent words. "Are you aware of the time required to obtain citizenship in this country without naturalization through marriage?"

Felix shrugs. "Five?"

"Ten," Lorenz corrects. "The landscape of a nation can be changed in ten years. Claude has a vision of peace that runs through his blood. The Alliance needs him. We don't have ten years to wait."

"By the time he works his way up to the Roundtable from a nobody, war might have already broken out."

"Better to end a war expediently than not at all."

In Felix's mind, there is Annette's dad, kneeled on the steps of the Seiros Church in Areadbhar. He was home at last after disappearing for four years without a trace, and he was there, day after day, begging for forgiveness from a merciless goddess instead of from his own family.

In Felix's mind, there is his father, night after night at his desk with a stack of classified documents spread before him. Trying to make sense of the nonsense of loss. Searching for a reason.

"For some people," Felix says, "the war never ends." He hears his own words in delay—like the time between lightning and thunder, and then comes the rain. The war ripped open a wound inside of him, and he has left it to fester for years, paying it no care. But his heart is still breaking; it's never stopped since the day his brother's uniform came home without him in it. "I was thirteen."

It's not much explanation but seems to be enough for Lorenz. His hands tighten around the steering wheel, a thin gold band shifting on his ring finger. "Did you lose someone very dear?"

Eyes trained on the towel twisted around his hands, Felix nods.

"My condolences," Lorenz says. "That must have been difficult for you."

Felix laughs, a pathetic, sputtering thing. "Some days more than others."

The arms of the windshield wipers swing like a metronome, measuring the beat of the classical track playing over the car stereo. Chopin, Felix realizes. Sylvain adores Chopin; it's the only reason he recognizes Nocturne at all.

As they turn the corner around a convenience store, Lorenz says, "You should spend a night about town with the group of us sometime, Felix. Hilda and Marianne are terribly fond of you."

Felix blinks up at him. "You're friends with Hilda and Marianne?"

"Hilda and Claude are quite close, yes. It's a large part of the reason that we chose The Locket."

"Huh," Felix says. Then, it occurs to him: "Marianne said she was getting drinks with Hilda and two friends tonight."

"Yes, we like to frequent this truly lovely place near Failnaught Park with a marvelous selection of wines."

"Is this why you're always loitering outside of the Gloucester Center? To get Marianne?"

"I do not _loiter_ ," Lorenz corrects. "I do make visits to the Center for official business from time to time, but if you've seen me in this car, then yes."

Felix hasn't so much _seen_ anyone in the car as wished that whoever drove the damn thing would eat shit and die, but he keeps this to himself. He's beginning to think that Lorenz Gloucester might be a pretty decent person. Guess it's true what they say: you shouldn't judge a book by the rose gold-plated shelf it sits on.

"I'm surprised that Sylvain has never mentioned our outings to you. He's joined us a time or two," Lorenz says.

Felix shrugs, not wanting to say either way. Recently, he's been wondering how well he truly sees or hears his own husband.

"Well, you should know that you are more than welcome to join us whenever you like. I hear that you are…quite the karaoke artist."

Felix stiffens in his seat. "What."

Lorenz hums quietly but makes no motion to answer Felix properly.

"Who said that," Felix pushes.

"I…may have been shown a video or two."

"What videos."

Lorenz's eyes glimmer like twin disco balls when he slides Felix a look.

" _What videos_."

Raising a mimed shot glass to the air, Lorenz lilts, "Cheers, my dear."

Felix wants to _die_ and kill Hilda or Marianne or Sylvain or whoever had the fucking nerve to collect and _spread_ evidence of the Tequila Incident _._ But maybe in reverse order. Kill first, then die. He's a flustered hot mess of embarrassment and indignation when he blurts out, "Well _,_ I wasn't the one who wore a big, purple dress at my big, gay wedding!"

Utterly unfazed by the desperate shot at the messenger, Lorenz shrugs. If anything, his amusement only deepens. "If you plan only to do something once, you must do yourself right."

Felix groans, slumping in his seat. The sunshield crinkles obnoxiously under him. "What is the big deal about _weddings_? It's just a party."

Lorenz considers this, then asks, "Why do you imagine people throw parties?"

"To get drunk and hook up?"

"Certainly," Lorenz allows. "But is it not also a way to gather close the people who matter?"

"I guess?" Felix flexes his fingers over the towel.

"Shared joy is a double joy, and shared sorrow is half a sorrow. As they say."

Felix relaxes his hand, and the gold inlay of his ring winks at him under the city lights. "Yeah. People keep saying stuff like that to me."

"I will admit to struggling with the idea as well at times," Lorenz says. "But recently, it's become clear to me that there's a special joy to be gained in giving people the chance to be proud of you."

"What do you mean, 'special joy'?"

Lorenz smiles, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "If you know anyone in your life who grew up in a certain mold, struggling to see themselves clearly, perhaps you can ask them about it. I think they'd be able to give you a meaningful answer."

Felix watches the windshield wipers wave over the glass. Inside his head, a thousand flutter through his head, leaving a furious fluster of feathers. It's an enormous effort, wading through the mess of it all and searching for the pieces that matter.

_I just wished that sometimes you wanted to show me off the way I want to flaunt to the world that you're mine._

_For the first time ever, I look in the mirror and think, hey, that guy might be pretty all right._

…How did it take him so long to notice?

"So, were you headed somewhere?" Lorenz asks, a perfect echo of himself.

This time, Felix has a proper answer for him.

"Yeah," he says. "I was just on my way home."


	9. Chapter 9

Sylvain is a happy person. He was nine years old when he decided this would be true.

It shouldn't be all that difficult for someone like him. A pureblood noble born into the lap of luxury, he was a boy blessed with his mother's shrewd senses and his father's careful calculation. Ladies with fat pearls cooed over his darling grin; gentlemen in sharp-pressed suits commended him on his successes in academia and athletics.

In return, he smiled, he winked, he tipped his head back in laughter.

See?

Sylvain is a happy person.

It wasn't rocket science when you got down to the mechanics of it. The enlightened minds of the modern world have it down to just simple arithmetic:

_Happiness equals Reality minus Expectations._

By age twelve, Sylvain had given up on being the perfect son. He was no longer driven to challenge his mind with more complicated algorithmic puzzles (it felt all a little silly to work so hard for something only to get jealousy and resentment in return). But this three-variable equation was as easy as they came. If H = R – E, and R was a shitty constant out of your control, the only way to increase H was to lower your E.

Or better yet? Erase it altogether.

For a while, it helped. There were fewer euphoric highs and soul-crushing lows. He took things as they came, never chased them when they went. He let people who wanted him have him for the night, and wouldn't care if they slammed the door on their way out in the morning.

(The fact that he got himself into trouble and had to surrender a spare key to his apartment was an unforeseen consequence.)

Things were… _enough_.

It's hard to describe this period of his life any other way. It was a tunnel, but he wasn't really walking a tunnel. It was easier to care for his friends than it was for himself. He could fix broken things but they would only last a while. There were lights, but they were pale and cold—city lights that sliced through the darkness instead of embracing it with gentle arms.

He was twenty when he received notice of a new roommate, a _first-year_ , Goddess, what was he going to do? But then, there he was, Felix Hugo Fraldarius, the chemistry scholar, sitting in the bathtub growling at Sylvain about his insidious use of petnames; and there he was, holding Sylvain to the promises he made; and there he was, telling Sylvain, point-blank, that his hurt _mattered_ , no matter how it compared to that of others.

Sylvain is a happy person.

Did he dare believe that, finally, when everything felt bright, so bright, and _warm_ for once, from the brightness? His E was lost in the eraser shavings brushed to the floor, but no longer was his R an evil constant to forebear, something to drown in dark spirits, or bury into strange bedmates.

Because Reality was Felix coming back to bed in the morning so that Sylvain didn't wake up alone.

Because Reality was Felix doing his clumsy best to make up bedtime stories with ever-afters, as though easing even a single point of Sylvain's burning hatred made all the effort worth it.

Because Reality was Felix wanting him so deeply that when he kissed him, he _licked_ into him like he wanted in between his muscle and bone.

But, in the words of legendary artists Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, "Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill." Hope was the romantic cousin of Expectation, out to exact revenge. He hadn't even realized she was out for him until she'd sunken her claws into him outside the county office, where he stood with their marriage certificate hot in his hand.

 _You fucked up_ , she taunted. Even though this, all this happiness, was more than he'd ever dreamed of having or thought he deserved, she'd let him know that he was greedy for more:

To see Felix dressed up in a dashing white suit. To walk down the aisle toward each other to the tempo of their favorite song. To fumble through their vows overwhelmed and half-sobbing, under the warm glow of string lights and the adoring gazes of their loved ones.

But it's okay, he convinced himself at night, when Felix reached for him in his sleep.

It's okay, he reminded himself in the morning, when he woke up with Felix's hand pressed over his heart.

It was okay.

It really was.

.

.

.

—Until it wasn't.

The moment he saw Felix bolt for the door, he'd been fast on the chase, hindered only by the need to wrangle Baby off his lap. He weaved past the breakfast bar, the cat tree, the picnic table; feet slapping the hardwood, heart slamming against his ribs.

Thinking he could catch the door before it closed, he grossly overshot his step and would've split his head on the metal doorframe had he not cast out an arm to catch himself in time. The flinging motion of his arm sent something flying through the air. It took barely a second to realize that it was his wedding band hurtling towards the door, impacting the wood with a sickening _crack_.

As it tumbled to the floor, something inside of him tipped.

An hourglass. But instead of sand it was the darkness he kept sheltered away. Maybe there was sand too, rubbing him raw every time his lungs filled and his heart beat, so that the poison could better penetrate his organs.

_Is this what you want for the rest of your life?_

Were those words his own, or had he heard them from somewhere before?

_If you think your happiness with that boy will last forever, you don't know yourself at all, Sylvain._

Dear, sweet mother. So smart and so keen on cutting into the most tender parts of him. She'd known that if she were to speak ill of Felix or his intentions, Sylvain would have leapt to his defense. Imply that it was her own son who could never find happiness with the person he loves, and Sylvain would be bare to her bullets.

He squeezes his eyes shut and counts backward from ten. His throat is a dumping grounds for broken glass, and his lungs throb from the effort of just doing its _job_.

_Just be normal._

_Don't be sad._

_Stop being so fucking sad._

His body is still quaking with panic when he hits zero. He feels an unfamiliar sting in his eyes, but he fights it back even though there's no one even fucking _there_ to see him fall apart. Who is he going to embarrass with his pathetic failures? Is his father going to materialize out of nowhere to scold him for burdening everyone with his useless emotions?

He starts over, counting down from twenty this time. Fifty. Ninety-nine.

Sylvain is a happy person.

Even though he can still feel her nails embedded in his skin—

Sylvain is a happy person.

Even though his brother's words echo in his ears: "If only you were never born—"

Sylvain is a happy person.

Even though he aches with the loss of family that he knows he's better off without—

_Sylvain is a happy person._

He is a happy person. He is a happy person, he is, oh Goddess, he _is_ , he must be, he needs to be, he is _happy_ —

When he wrenches his eyes open, the world before him is a blurry mess of shapes running loose together. Even so, he knows every piece of Wonder Wall by heart. Forsythia sunbursts exploding in a golden sweep of pixie dust. Summer at Lake Teutates, the sky opaline with the rising sun and clouds yawning across the trimmed lawns of private villas. A time series of twilight at Garreg Mach Monastery: a blushing indigo spreads her skirts over the skyline, settling primly in her seat; the moon peeks out drowsily from behind cottoned clouds; the stars begin their exchange of the humanity's secrets in a growing susurrus of whispers.

At the center of all these moments that he's eternalized for safekeeping is Felix. It's Kite-Flyer's Day, but the true festival is in his dark, untamable hair and his eyes so bright Sylvain could not bear to live under another sun. In the picture, Felix turns back, searching for his hand.

What was it that Sylvain wrote to him in his wedding vows?

_I think I'm a little better at honesty now with you, in a way I never thought I could be with anyone._

Sylvain wanted, so badly, to be better for him. But Sylvain, after all, is only himself.

When fresh tears flood his eyes, he doesn't bother blinking them back. This time, he lets himself cry.

Goddess, he cries.


	10. Chapter 10

Felix barrels up the rickety front steps of the townhouse in a rush toward the door.

He's got his keys out in one hand but reaches straight for the knob with the other just in case the door's still unlocked. The knob turns in his hand and the momentum he'd gathered from his sprint slams it wide open into the house.

The sight of Sylvain sucker-punches the air out of him. Tucked into a ball under the stairs, he sits with his head ducked over his knees. His arms and shoulders are drawn around his body, trembling furiously, and his hair is an unruly mess of curls yanked and wrested every which way.

He looks so small, like he's trying to make himself disappear.

Felix shoves the door shut behind him like he hasn't made enough of a ruckus already, but it's only when he tries an uncertain _Hey..._ that Sylvain lifts his head. Stubble rusts his mottled cheeks and pink puffs pillow his moon-bright eyes. He looks bewildered to see his own husband coming home.

Felix takes a breath, takes a step. "Fuck. Are you _crying_?"

Shoving his face back down into his hands, Sylvain starts to say, "No—" but Felix is already breaking out into a sprint toward him. His arms fly open like propellers, and the moment his knees crash land in front of Sylvain, he captures him by the shoulders and smashes him against his chest so hard that he knocks the breath out of them both.

"Shit," Felix wheezes. "I've never seen you cry like this before."

"I get really ugly." Sylvain's voice is a gravelly, mangled croak, muffled against the still-moist cotton of Felix's shirt.

Felix shakes his head, clutching him tighter. Sylvain feels different in his arms. Goddess, has he grown thinner? How did Felix not notice that? "Never," he says firmly. "Always pretty."

Somehow, this only makes Sylvain cry harder, until he chokes on a wet gargle that might've been a real sob in the throat of someone with more experience letting himself cry. Drawing back just enough to give him room to breathe, Felix rubs his back through the coughing fit that ensues.

"Easy," he coaxes. "You need to keep breathing."

Sylvain obeys, following the _in_ s and _out_ s that Felix coaches him through until he's no longer in danger of hyperventilation. All the while Felix stares at the utter wreck of him. Seeing Sylvain this way is so much worse than facing any of the hard truths that were forced on him tonight. If he could bear Sylvain's pain for him, he would.

Squeezing him tight one more time, Felix pulls back to shift off his sore knees and onto the balls of his feet. It's on the tip of his tongue to tell Sylvain that they're going to get up and move to a better spot to talk when he feels something under his left shoe. Thinking it must be a stray pellet of litter pine, he slots a hand underneath himself to brush it out of the way.

Horror freezes his blood when he registers the shape of it.

"Why…" He's trying to keep his hand from shaking as he lifts Sylvain's ring up between them, but his voice trembles instead. "Did you take this off?"

"No!" Sylvain protests, eyes blaring. The honest distress on his face is the only thing that keeps Felix's mind from crashing. "Of course not. It…it flew off."

"What?" Felix frowns, and that seems to strike a panic button in Sylvain, whose eyes grow even wider upon seeing it.

"Felix, I swear it's true! I was chasing after you and almost crashed into the door, so I threw my arm out to catch myself. And then, I don't know! It just went sailing into the air and hit the wall with this really awful sound, Goddess, Felix, I didn't mean for it to happen. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I—"

"Wait, stop, just—hang on." Felix holds up a hand, and Sylvain's mouth clamps shut. "I'm not trying to blame you. It was an accident, right? It's okay."

He watches Sylvain work his teeth into his bottom lip, unconvinced.

"Here," Felix says, fishing Sylvain's left hand out from under his huddled knees, and slides the ring back over his finger. It slips on without any resistance despite the clamminess of his skin. He really must have lost some weight, then, since he got his ring readjusted to fit in winter. "All better."

Sylvain stares down at it, then gives it a turn with his thumb. A moment of calm falls between them as they both admire the silver twinkle of the smooth metal. It almost feels like this is all it takes for things to be right again. But just in case Felix managed to regain any smidgeon of composure in this time, it's immediately decimated when Sylvain whispers, with genuine awe, "I didn't think you'd want me to have this anymore."

His heart kicks. Or feels like it's been kicked. "Fuck, Sylvain," he breathes. "What the hell?"

Sylvain doesn't meet his eyes. "I just thought that maybe…"

There's no way Felix can handle hearing the rest of that sentence. "Look, I never should've run out like that, okay? Or said any of those stupid things I said. I just got so fucking _angry_ and—" Felix knows he's reacting again instead of thinking. What does Sylvain need to hear? Felix is certain that he understands his husband better than anyone else in the world so _what does Sylvain need from him right now_?

He cups Sylvain's cheeks in both hands. "I love you," he says as, slowly, Sylvain's eyes blink up at him. " _I love you_. I need you to know that."

There's a flicker of something that catches light briefly before their favorite spell wears off. With all that's happened and all that Felix wasn't even here to see happen—and fuck, why hadn't he been _there_ for him?—it's not surprising that magic simply isn't enough. Sylvain's throat bobs, and he looks away again.

Felix feels a rush of desperation rise inside his chest. "Sylvain, please. Look at me?"

Sylvain's gaze remains glued to the floor, but he reaches out a hand, fingertips brushing the hem of Felix's shirt. "You're all wet."

It's not what he wants, but he needs Sylvain to keep talking to him, so he replies, "Yeah."

"Why are you wet?"

"Got caught in that flash storm."

Sylvain stops rubbing his fingers over the stitching of the hem. "It was raining?" Simultaneously, they turn to look at the still-dripping glass door at the rear of the living room.

Felix feels the small _oh_ that slips through Sylvain's lips punch a hole in his chest. The rain must have been pelting like stones against the back door and the ancient window frame rattling obnoxiously behind his head, and Sylvain hadn't noticed at all.

"You should really relearn how to drive," Sylvain says.

An incredulous laugh trips out of Felix. "Really? _Now_?"

Nothing.

Felix stares at him. "Do you not want to talk right now?"

Sylvain shrugs.

It's unbearable to even think about another night in bed with an inviolable boundary line between them, but Felix can't force Sylvain to want to work things out with him. "We can wait if you wanna get some rest first."

Sylvain appears to consider this, at least. The bar is on the floor, but Felix is counting anything other than total detachment as a win. Sylvain shrugs again. "Not like it'd make a difference. We can talk."

"Okay," Felix says. He rises to his feet, kicking off his wet shoes, then reaches back down to help Sylvain up after him. They both wobble a bit, steadying themselves against each other. "I'm just gonna get dry. Meet you at the table?"

When Felix starts to let their hands go and head toward the stairs, he's jerked back by an iron grip around his wrist. "Wait."

Taken aback by the urgency in his voice, Felix looks over his shoulder at Sylvain. "I'm not showering or anything, just gonna change. I'll be right back down," he tells him.

"Can I…" The words seem to get stuck in Sylvain's throat. He clings harder to Felix.

When Felix slips his wrist out of Sylvain's hold, there's a moment when he can tell that Sylvain thinks he's being rejected, before realizing that Felix is only readjusting their hands so that their fingers can interlace. "Come on."

As Felix climbs the stairs with Sylvain in tow, regret over that crash-landing on the hardwood floor seeps deeper into him with every ascending step. He wonders which creaks louder: his disjointed knees or the century-old wood panels under his feet. But it'd just felt like the right thing to do at the moment, to fly to Sylvain's side in his moment of need. Put that way, he would do it again and again, until his kneecaps turned to dust.

They've seen each other naked thousands of times, but Felix has never been so acutely aware of his own nudity in Sylvain's presence as he is now. He flits about the room, stripping himself of his damp shirt and rummaging the dresser for dry clothes, before heading into the bathroom to find a towel.

All this while, Sylvain trails after him quietly, keeping only enough distance that they don't crash into each other when Felix makes a sudden stop or turn. It underlines how in tune with Felix's needs Sylvain normally is that it feels so jarring now, for him just to be standing there and not laying their fluffiest towel over Felix's shoulders or asking if he'd rather have his Smurfs shirt or flannels.

But that's kind of the thing, isn't it?

Sylvain is not okay, and it's been months of them both pretending otherwise.

"You wanna wash your face?" Felix catches Sylvain's eye through the bathroom mirror as he tugs his stiff, disgusting braid out of its tie, shoving his fingers into his hair to loosen it back up.

Sylvain takes the tube of facewash Felix passes him with a mumbled word of thanks. Even now, he's painstakingly methodical about frothing up the dime-sized glob he squeezes onto his fingertips and working the foam into his skin. He rinses his face clean and pats it dry on the small towel hanging to his left.

"Lotion?" Felix slides the small pod of Sylvain's favorite face cream toward him.

Sylvain eyes the wide-toothed comb Felix's just dug out of the top drawer. He shakes his head.

"Toner first?" Felix guesses. He doesn't actually know what toner is.

Sylvain's voice is a rough, tenuous thing, but it's just the slightest bit steadier now, when he says, "Here. Let me," reaching for the comb.

Felix blinks at him. This man, who must have grown up with so few scraps of attention to his needs that he refuses to let himself be taken care of, even now. "It's fine," he says, not relenting his hold on the comb when Sylvain tugs at it. "Leave it."

Sylvain's hand falls back down to his side, and his face clouds. Whatever the right thing to do in that moment was, refusing Sylvain's offer to be helpful to him, _to touch him_ , clearly wasn't it. "You have such beautiful hair, and you never want to take care of it."

"It's because you're always fighting me for the brush," Felix says.

"I like touching your hair," Sylvain says, and there's a million voices inside of Felix's head screaming, _Then touch it. I take back what I said before. Just touch me_. "I know you leave it long for me, so. It's the least I can do to make it easier on you."

"Having long hair's already easy. I just tie it up when I want it out of my face." Felix lays the comb down on the edge of the countertop and picks up the abandoned hair tie instead, rolling it onto his wrist. "I wouldn't do something I didn't want to just for you."

"I know. I like that about you."

"Then you know," Felix says, reaching for Sylvain's arm to give it a gentle squeeze, "that if I really didn't like you taking care of me, I wouldn't let you do it. All the stuff I said about you treating me like a woman or whatever—that was some fucked up bullshit." He grimaces. "I gotta stop, but goddess is it hard."

Sylvain is looking down at Felix's hand on his arm. "It's okay," he mumbles, but it doesn't sound right to Felix that he should hurt someone he loves like this and be granted such easy absolution. This isn't forgiveness; it's avoidance of the problem.

"Is it?" Felix feels his frown deepen. "You once told me that you don't have to like all of me to love all of me. But you never even tell me when shit I do bothers you. You always just try to be— _okay_ with it."

"I would never try to change you."

"But don't you want—" Felix growls, scraping the depths of his vocabulary for the right words to reach him. "Hasn't it ever crossed your mind that I _want_ to be a better person for you? Isn't that what you try to do for me, too?"

Sylvain lets out a self-deprecating laugh, lips locked in a cruel twist. "And look how that turned out."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that I'm still _me_." Sylvain gives a wild wave of his hands, sending the comb clattering across the countertop. "I thought I was getting better, that I was getting my act together—I have this, this home, you know? A good job. I'm married to the man I love. And still, all this, and—why can't I just be _happy_?"

A sharp ache tugs at Felix's chest. He knows the exact answer to this question.

For Sylvain—for this sweet, beautiful man who is his husband—his self-hatred is his comfort. It's his worst and most familiar friend. It's where he anchors the center of his world when he can't make sense of things; when he can't trust what's in front of him is real.

"It's harder for you to be happy," Felix says, "because you aren't well."

What he means to say is _I know that it's part of you, and I see you, and I know you, and I love you the whole of you._ But it's clearly not what Sylvain hears.

"How can you just _say_ that? You don't even _know_ what this feels like!" he shouts, eyes flashing and skin a livid red from his neck to his hairline. He tries to shake out of Felix's grasp, but Felix clutches him tighter because he cannot let this man go.

"You're right," Felix admits, and this at least gets Sylvain to stop thrashing about. Felix sucks in his top lip, running his tongue along the cracked lines there before releasing it with a wince. "You're right. I don't know how this feels for you, but I want to. I _want_ to know what you're going through, if you'd still trust me with that side of you."

At this, Sylvain lets out a pained whimper like he's been kicked. It's almost worse than the anger. "I don't even trust myself with that side of me," he says. "It's just not _fair_. I don't want to lose control over my emotions and go to therapy and be fucking medicated just to feel _okay_ with having all these things that would make anyone else delirious with joy."

These confessions make Felix physically hurt. But Sylvain needs to say them, and Felix needs to hear them. "That's them, and you're you," he says.

"Then I don't want to be me!" Sylvain cries out. "Why do _you_ even want me? Wouldn't you rather have someone who knows how to be happy? Who could make _you_ happy?"

The last time Felix had heard Sylvain ask him questions along the same vein, he'd been too caught up in his own feelings to understand what they meant. He'd made Sylvain choke back his own feelings and promise never to speak of them again.

This time, Felix tunes down the roar of emotion in his own ears and hears what Sylvain is truly trying to say.

He takes a deep breath, resting his head over Sylvain's shoulder. He closes his eyes and centers his attention on the truth of the matter: "I want you to be happy, too, Sylvain. But I don't love you only when you're happy. I want you to get better, but I'm not only here for your best days. And I don't need you to always be the one to fix us or to shoulder all the blame. You're so good at making excuses for the people you love, but where does that leave you?" He slides his hands down to Sylvain's waist and slips his arms around him. He hugs Sylvain ever closer, enveloping the love letter of his body. "You matter. Your feelings matter, Sylvain. They matter to me."

Sylvain remains stiff for a frighteningly long time. Felix doesn't dare breathe as he waits for him to respond. Then, all in a rush, Sylvain falls loose like a melted bag of bones in his arms, succumbing to a comfort that will actually make him warm. Despite however much thinner he's gotten, Sylvain is still heavy as brick, but Felix has spent his entire life training for this. The moment he gets to use his strength to hold his husband together.

"I know I've been shit about showing it," he whispers, "but your feelings matter so fucking much to me."

"…I don't deserve you," Sylvain mumbles into his hair.

"Yes, you do," Felix says firmly. "You just don't want to believe it."

"But it's _terrifying_."

"What is?"

Sylvain doesn't answer right away. His breath comes out moist over Felix's skin. It's hot and insanely uncomfortable, but to deprive Sylvain of his safe place, tucked away in the nooks of Felix's body, is unthinkable.

"…It's terrifying," Sylvain repeats, a quiet, wispy sound, "the way I feel about you."

A bell sounds in Felix's head. "Hm. You've said that before." He slides his hand down to find Sylvain's, touching his fingertips to the soft webbing between Sylvain's fingers. Sylvain allows him in to fill the gaps. "Why is it scary to you?"

"Because good things don't happen to me. And yet…" Sylvain squeezes their clasped hands, and Felix squeezes back.

"I'm the same, you know," he says.

Sylvain draws his head back slightly to look at him, though they're still so close that Felix's face must be no more than a blurry double image. "You are?"

Felix bites his lip. "I've been seeing this dream," he says. "Sometimes, we're fighting a war. I don't always have arms."

This makes Sylvain flinch. He strokes his thumb along the soft line of Felix's wrist in assurance that it's still there.

Felix shakes his head. "Honestly, though? I don't even care," he says. "Because losing my arms is nothing when I always, _always_ lose you."

Sylvain's eyes widen in alarm. "You'll never— I would never—" He swallows. "I know it's a thing with you, feeling like everyone's just going to leave. And I would never do that to you, but I don't want you to feel like…" He tightens his jaw, staring off somewhere beyond Felix's shoulder.

"What?" Felix puts a hand on Sylvain's chest to try to draw him back, but Sylvain only hangs his head, shoulders slumped defensively. "Sylvain, I didn't tell you all that looking for an apology. I just want you to believe me—really _believe me_ —when I say that I just want _you_."

"…But sometimes," Sylvain says weakly, "people change their minds. And if you do, I…"

The suggestion is so fucking _insulting_.

Felix is fuming through his ears when, wordlessly, he begins to drag Sylvain out through their bedroom, letting him trip over his big clown feet as they stumble their way back down in the foyer.

"What's going on?" Sylvain asks.

Felix scowls. "I have to show you something because today's gone on for about a week and a half, and I can't even buy a vowel anymore."

On Wonder Wall, the "paper copy" of Sylvain's vows sits right beneath the picture of Felix and his flyaway hair from the kite festival. He marches up to it and practically rips it off the wall. The frame is a beautiful old thing that Sylvain set aside in his collection for the card: coffee-colored and lightly pockmarked, with the clinging scent of whatever castle it was supposedly rescued from. Felix was the one who placed the card in the frame, and he recalls the secrets of the rusty latches as he jiggles loose the back panel, then pops out the card.

He shoves it at Sylvain, who gives him an uncomprehending look. "You're going to remind me of my own vows…?"

Felix flips the card over pointedly, and he watches Sylvain's eyes round to twin saucers at the sight of Felix's lettering, crammed to the edges of the page.

" _Oh_."

"I wrote this after you went to sleep that night." He shoves the card more insistently at Sylvain, who finally takes it out of his hand. "Read it."

" _Dear husband of one year_ —"

Felix slaps both hands over Sylvain's mouth. "To yourself!"

There's some muffled mumble-jumble, then Felix's entire palm is warm and sticky with a slobbery tongue.

"Fuck, what are you, a dog?" Felix huffs, wiping his hands off on the front of Sylvain's shirt. "I haven't even washed my hands since I got home."

"Why does it say that?"

"Because." Felix folds his arms over his chest. "I was going to show it to you on the day of our one-year."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't actually start this off with ‘look' like you originally intended," Sylvain says, pointing to the place where the word is barely legible under a wall of strikeouts.

"If you're just gonna fucking stand there and _ridicule_ me—" Felix reaches out to swipe the card out from Sylvain's grasp, but Sylvain moves it up and away from him just in time. He grabs Felix by the elbow, and when their eyes meet, Felix thinks it might be the first time Sylvain has really seen him since he got home.

"No," Sylvain says. "Sorry. Let me read."

> _~~Look~~ _ _Dear husband of one year,_
> 
> _I don't have your way with words_ , _so I'll keep this short._
> 
> _In a year from now, I don't know what our life will look like. Maybe the future will be a feast on the horizon like you said, or maybe it'll be that shitty taco truck on campus that gave everyone the runs._ _Knowing our luck, my bet is on the latter._
> 
> _But that's okay. We'll clear the shit out of our system, wipe our asses, and move on. Sometimes, it might be harder to get off the toilet. Sometimes, we'll have to take an antidiarrheal._
> 
> _In sickness and in health, right?_
> 
> _Anyway._
> 
> _The point is that I never want to give up trying._
> 
> _I love you. The way I feel about you is not a temporary thing, either. It is eternal and unconditional because you are my non-negotiable clause. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you and know that you are more than worthy of happiness._
> 
> _You, a beating heart mended by only the finest gold flakes on this earth._
> 
> _You, the absolute worst Mariah Carey karaoke singer in all of Fódlan—and thank the saints for it; you have to be bad at_ something _._
> 
> _"Keep it short," I say, while I write off the page. Shit. Maybe I'll get better at this in another year, or it'll probably take me five, or even fifty. I don't know. All I know is that no matter what the future holds, I want to live it with you._ _Yours,_ _Felix._

Felix watches Sylvain's eyes trace the last lines of the letter, rotating the card sideways to read the few words that hadn't fit across the bottom. He's still staring down at the card when he says, "Were you really talking about diarrhea in the first third of this?"

Felix sputters, face heating. "It was two in the morning! And I just wanted to go back to bed with you, all right? I told you, I don't write like you do."

"No… No, I think you're _better_." Sylvain gives the letter another once-over, lifts his face, and says, "Non-negotiable clause, huh."

A tiny flare of hope lurks in his eyes, so slight that Felix almost misses it. But when Felix tries on a smile for him, the flare spreads like a wildfire across his features.

"It felt right," Felix says.

"We pinky-swore on it."

"We did. I'm pretty attached to my pinky."

"It's the cutest of the fingerlings."

The laughter that sneaks up on him, tripping out of his mouth as he echoes, "Fucking _fingerlings_ ," catches them both off-guard. And then Sylvain is chuckling, too, ducking into him with one hand braced on the back of his neck while the other slides around his waist, one corner of the card poking him in the back. Their foreheads bump, noses bump, and their lips are mere centimeters apart. Sylvain is tilting his head, as if asking for permission, so Felix meets him halfway, slanting against him such that they fit. They mold together, like they were cast for each other.

The kiss feels like the first drag of air you take after holding your breath under water. They gasp and grasp and still, it's not enough. Sylvain's breath is in his lungs and Felix's hand is spread like a starburst over his heart, and they kiss and kiss and kiss until they're both crying.

"I don't want to give up on us either—"

"Then don't! It's just seems hopeless sometimes because there's seven _thousand_ problems and only the two of us and a cat who doesn't even fucking know that there's not another cat in the mirror, but—"

"How rude!"

"Dammit Sylvain, she's not even listening!" In fact, Felix hasn't seen Baby since she zipped off somewhere after he exploded through the front door like a psycho.

Felix takes a breath, then lets it out in a loose chuckle. He keeps his hand anchored on Sylvain's chest and leans in, resting his head against his shoulder. Sylvain lets out a soft hum into his hair. Felix can feel hot moisture seeping into his hair, but that's fine; Sylvain's shirt is stained with wet spots, too. Together, they sway gently to the quiet sounds of the city. It's something like dancing.

"I'm sorry," Sylvain whispers, "for what I said about our wedding not being real. I can see why you reacted the way you did. There isn't a part of me that thinks what we have is less real because of it."

"But it's important to you anyway, isn't it?" Felix asks. "For people to see you for the person you are now."

Felix feels Sylvain smiling into his hair. "You knew?"

"Not until pretty recently," Felix admits, by which he means earlier that night, in Lorenz's car. Though if he really thinks about it, he'd realized after his rotation with Luzia how much easier it was to feel good about a good thing you've done if you let others in on it too; it just hadn't occurred to him that it was the same for Sylvain, too. "I should've tried harder to understand."

Sylvain shakes his head. "I don't think it would've really mattered whether we had a wedding or not. Doesn't change the mess in my head."

"But you could have still talked to me about it. You _especially_ should have talked to me about it."

"I wanted to marry you, Felix. And by some miracle, you wanted me too. It didn't matter to me whether you didn't want a traditional wedding or just wanted me to file your taxes. I wanted anything you could give me. Is that pathetic?"

Felix holds up a hand, rearing back to stare at him. "Wait. I did _not_ marry you only for tax benefits. Fuck, did you actually think that all this time?"

"Well, Marianne mentioned you were asking about filing taxes jointly the same day you asked if we should get married, so…" Felix opens his mouth to protest that that isn't even half the story, but then he sees the smile that sneaks in from one corner of Sylvain's mouth. "I know that you would've been transparent with me if that was really the only reason. It just really doesn't matter to me what the impetus was. All I want is to keep you."

"You get to," Felix stresses. "I'm here. I'm yours."

"I know, I just… I wanted it to be…" Sylvain trails off, and this time when he starts to fidget with his ring, Felix finally gets what that nervous gesture means.

"Me too," Felix says, grabbing Sylvain's left hand with his own. Their rings meet in a metallic clash, but they're not weapons crossing each other on the opposite sides of a war. The true enemy has always been the ghosts of their past, not each other. It's just taken far too long to realize that. "I wanted a promise, too."

A slow light melts over Sylvain's eyes. Soft, sweet butterscotch. "Guess we're twinsies," he says.

"Yeah." Felix feels an answering warmth spread through his body. "I guess so."

Sylvain kisses his forehead, then his temple, then his cheek. "You wanna sit?"

Felix hums, tilting into every kiss. "If you're tired, we can go to sleep."

"I want to keep talking to you. Feels like it's been so long since we've talked like this." Several more kisses rain down over the crown of his head. "But unlike you, I don't have work tomorrow. Up to you."

"I can stay up," Felix decides without pause.

So, they keep talking. Their voices fade in and out, punctuated by the occasional verbal nod, grounding points to reel each other back in when one goes off on runaway tangents or the other loses himself in the details of long-ago stories.

Sylvain tells Felix about the radio shows he used to follow just to drown out the voices inside his own head. He tells him about the happiness equation. He tells him about how photographs immortalized the few good memories he'd ever had with his family.

Felix doesn't talk about thirteen. Even after more than a decade, Felix cannot find the words to talk about thirteen. But for Sylvain, he's willing to try. Not because Sylvain ever demands it of him, or that telling him would assuage his anger, his hurt, his fears—but just because he wants his husband to understand what life was like for him in the years before thirteen and all the interminable ones that came after.

The United Fódlan wasn't built in a day, and they can't possibly mend every crack and fissure with gold in one conversation, but that's okay. 

They're going to be okay.

It's past midnight, now, and they're slouched side by side, heads resting over their arms on the picnic table. They'd spent a few minutes clearing off the mess together and were surprised by how easy the task was when they worked together. Now, there's just two empty teacups in front of them, their contents long ago drained. The caffeine has left them both a little wired despite their exhaustion.

Sylvain is tracing idle little circles into Felix's arm. It tickles. Felix bats at him lazily.

"Baby," Sylvain says, and Felix isn't sure if it's an endearment or taunt or if he's having his likeness to their cat pointed out to him again. Honestly, Felix doesn't care. He loves the sound of it anyway.

"So, when do you wanna have that wedding?" he asks.

Sylvain raises his eyebrows, withdrawing his hand. "I meant what I said earlier about the whole wedding business. That wasn't me just sweeping things under the rug."

"Really?" Felix presses, doubtful still.

"Really." Sylvain nods. "All I needed was to feel like you cared about how I felt."

"Of course I care," Felix says.

"I know you do, sweetheart." _But I still like to hear it_ , Felix knows, is what he means. "Besides, my sweater franchise didn't do well enough for that round-the-world trip. Gotta keep the purse strings tight."

"Or," Felix says, "there's that money my dad gave us."

Sylvain shoots up in his seat, snapping to attention. "Oh. Yeah."

Felix frowns. "What?"

"Your dad called earlier. Goddess. I didn't answer because I was still a train wreck and didn't know why he'd call me. I forgot we even exchanged numbers." Sylvain drags his hands over his cheeks, doing a fairly decent impression of Munch's _The Scream_. "Fuck, I'm the worst son-in-law ever. What do you think he wants?"

"Oh." Felix bites his lip. "I was talking to him earlier. And then hung up abruptly."

Sylvain makes an agonized noise. "Goddess, Fe, is he going to send his men after me?"

"For _what_?"

"For hurting his son? Isn't that why you called…?"

Felix aims an affronted glare at Sylvain. "You think I called my dad to cry over my _broken heart_?" The last two words make Sylvain flinch visibly, and unwilling to inflict any more damage on Sylvain's tofu core, Felix softens his stance. "We talked about Glenn. He probably tried your number because he couldn't reach me again after I hung up on him."

Sylvain slumps forward with a sigh. "I'm afraid to look."

"Where's your phone?" Felix holds out a soliciting hand, palm up.

Sylvain digs his phone out of his back pocket and hands it to Felix facedown. Felix unlocks it with his thumb, noting several unread messages from Lorenz.

"So? What'd he say?" Sylvain is squinting at the screen like he's looking into a solar eclipse. It might be adorable.

Felix scrolls through the messages his dad sent, reading. He presses his lips together, turning the screen toward Sylvain.

 **_Felix's dad (22:12PM):_ ** _Hi, Sylvain. This is Felix's dad._  
 **_Felix's dad (22:12PM):_ ** _Do you know how Felix is doing?_  
 **_Felix's dad (22:13PM):_ ** _I haven't been able to reach him, and I just want to know that he's safe._  
 **_Felix's dad (22:27PM):_ ** _He isn't always the easiest kid to get along with, but I hope you'll be patient with him and stick through the tough times by his side._  
 **_Felix's dad (22:31PM):_ ** _Ca_ _ll or text no matter the hour. And I don't mean only tonight or about Felix._

Sylvain's eyes chase the words across the screen, and there's something brittle and bright there when he lifts his face. "I guess…I should text him back."

"Yeah," Felix says. He watches Sylvain's thumbs fly over the keyboard, tapping back a couple of quick messages. He's just placed the phone down on the table when the screen lights up again.

 **Felix's dad (00:41AM):** _Thank you for letting me know._  
 **Felix's dad (00:41AM):** _Would you please also tell Felix that I'll call tomorrow to follow up?_  
 **Felix's dad (00:42AM):** _I'm glad that you're both okay. Take care of each other, but don't be afraid to reach out if you need help._  
 **Felix's dad (00:42AM):** _Good night._

Not for the first time, Felix wishes they had proper chairs so that he could let himself go boneless against the back of it. He leans his head on Sylvain's shoulder instead. "Fuck. I'm twenty-four years old, and he's finally trying to act like my dad."

"You like it," Sylvain teases.

Felix's face scrunches into a scowl. "How am I even supposed to know how to feel?"

"I like it," Sylvain says, losing the playful lilt. "He cares about you. I care about you. We agree."

"Don't try and pretend to be a simple creature."

He can hear the cheeky grin in Sylvain's voice when he says, "Simple is best."

" _Sure_ , let's pretend the guy with a hundred-step skincare routine believes that."

"Oh, but how else is a man to coax his beloved to caress his cheek all tenderly-like?"

Felix groans. "I forget that Post-Midnight Sylvain is the worst."

"I'd rather Cinderella Sylvain, if you must." He bats his stupid long eyelashes at Felix.

"The _worst_ ," Felix emphasizes, but Sylvain is on a roll, affecting a swoon:

"Oh, ride by on your white stallion, Prince Charming, and see that the slipper of your lost love fits my foot."

Felix rolls his eyes but cannot deny the secret delight he feels at seeing Sylvain regain some of his spark. "How is Prince Charming ever gonna carry a fucking glass _canoe_ on the back of his horse?"

"Hey!" Sylvain protests around the laughter bubbling out of him. "My feet are not _that_ big."

"Your feet are the biggest," Felix tells him. He reaches up to pat him on the cheek and lets his hand get captured by Sylvain's and held prisoner there against the rough stubble of his jaw. He goes willingly when Sylvain draws him in like a fish on a line. He sputters indignantly when, instead of kissing him like he'd thought, Sylvain flicks the tip of his nose.

"What'd you do that for, bastard?" Felix hisses.

Sylvain's pretty eyes glitter coyly as he ducks down to trace the line of Felix's neck with his even prettier mouth. "Bad kitty," he admonishes. "You know it's not nice to make fun of a person's bigness."

His lips leave a trail of fire in their wake, and a sudden pulse of hunger thrums through Felix's veins. "I never said it was a bad thing," he murmurs.

"Oh yeah?" Felix shudders at the vibration of Sylvain's voice over his pulse point. He drags Sylvain up to press their mouths together, sucking on his bottom lip until Sylvain lets out a rumbling groan that Felix feels roll through his body, too.

"Yeah," he breathes. "I like big."

Sylvain's eyes darken, lids dropping to half-mast, as he twists in his seat, cupping his body around Felix's side. He seizes Felix's hipbones and presses himself close until Felix can feel the hardening edge of him. "How much do you like it?"

"How much do _you_ like it?" Felix returns.

"C'mon, darling, throw me a line," Sylvain says, hands roaming hungrily over Felix's body.

Felix groans, arching into his touch. " _A lot_ , okay? You fucking know we both like it a lot."

"Enough to let me take you to bed?"

Sylvain's parted lips brush hot over Felix's collarbone. The touch-starved, ravenous part of him wants nothing more than to be thrown over one shoulder and haversacked up the stairs to their bedroom.

But then, there's the other part of him—the part that _remembers_ things and cautions against happy endings—that makes his excitement run a little cold.

He swallows. "Last time…"

"…was last time," Sylvain tells him. The pointy ends of his grin round out, and his voice softens. "We're going to start fresh."

"Does anyone ever really get to start over?"

"Maybe not from zero. But I was thinking"—Sylvain presses a kiss, pure and simple, to his cheek—"we could start again with two."

Felix maps the terrain of Sylvain's face with his eyes, careful as a cartographer, while Sylvain studies the shapes of his features, too.

"But if you don't want to," Sylvain says, "we don't have to."

But how is that even a fair thing to say with his left hand burning a brand on Felix's thigh and his right sliding down Felix's bare arm, raising goosebumps all along the way? When Felix shifts in his hold to pull him in by the back of his head, there's only one answer on his lips: "Don't make me wait for it."

Sylvain doesn't. He answers immediately with the heat of his mouth on Felix's, parting the crease of his lips with his tongue. Felix opens for him on a moan, and then there are teeth tugging, tongues touching, fingers laced in his hair.

They pinball toward the stairs, tripping over their own limbs and bumping hard against edges of walls and the knobs of doors. They giggle and groan and don't let go.

They've divested themselves of most of their clothing by the time they reach the bedroom door, and with the way Sylvain practically hauls him across the threshold, Felix is prepared to be flung dramatically over the unmade bed the moment he kicks his underwear off his ankle.

He's not expecting the cry of outrage that erupts from the bed.

But there she is, fucking _Baby_ , sitting regal as a queen on Sylvain's pillow. Her eyes are flashing, _demanding_ how they can be so late for bedtime.

Sylvain laughs at the exchange of murderous looks between Felix and the spawn of Nemesis. "Awww, Baby's so pretty when she's piss—"

With a hard shove that sends Sylvain toppling back onto the mattress and Baby dashing for cover under the bedside table, Felix climbs on top of him, wedging a knee between his thighs. He braces his hands on either side of Sylvain's head, hair falling in a curtain around them.

"Look here, big guy," he whispers. "I'll show you who's your baby."

They're infected with something wild and desperate when their mouths meet again, and it takes every ounce of Felix's willpower not to straddle Sylvain's hips and rock mindlessly into the rigid line straining through his boxers. But he's got half a plan forming in his mind, and it's the best one he's had in months.

He kisses a circuitous path down Sylvain's body; worshipping the sweep of freckles across his shoulders, teasing the hard planes of his pecs with his teeth, brushing his lips over the tender inside of his wrists, lifting his thighs to nibble at the sensitive skin there, too. In his mind, Felix makes a side note that it does really seem like Sylvain has lost some weight since the last time Felix has had him spread bare under him like this, and he resolves to rectify that starting from an overindulgent breakfast in bed the next morning. For now, though, Sylvain is Felix's feast.

"Felix," Sylvain moans, squirming. "Felix, what are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Felix hooks his thumb under the waistband of Sylvain's underwear and drags the fabric slowly—oh so slowly—over his ass, his thighs. He can't help the simultaneous leap of joy in his chest and between his legs when Sylvain's cock springs free. Its scent is thick and musky and abso-fucking-lutely delicious. His mouth waters for a taste of it.

Not just yet, though.

He ducks back down, drags his blunt nails against the skin of Sylvain's thighs, and lets out a wrecked noise when Sylvain bucks his hips up into Felix's face. Sylvain whimpers pitifully when Felix's lips land just off-center of where he's pulsing with need. There's a leaden ache stewing low in Felix's belly, too. It's hard to tell who's burning a fever pitch here. Maybe they both are.

 _"Sweetheart…_ what _…"_ he gasps, capturing Felix's face in both hands.

Felix raises both eyebrows, smile on the bordering edge of coquettish. "Can't you tell that I'm seducing my husband? I hear that it's _imperative_ that I do."

"Holy shit." Sylvain lets his head fall back with a groan, staring up at the ceiling. "That is _so_ not what I said."

Felix hums and wets his lips with his tongue as he teases butterfly touches over Sylvain's balls. "Was this more what you had in mind?" he asks, a split-second before he stretches his lips over the head of Sylvain's cock.

And _fuck_ , Felix swears he's never swallowed around anything better before. His pleasure is elevated by the delicious sounds Sylvain's choking out and the vigorous strain of muscle in his stomach and thighs, on full restraint to keep from fucking up into Felix's throat—as if Felix would even mind that. He brushes his lips along the steely ridge of his cockhead, then supports the length in one hand as he drags his mouth from head to hilt along the underside. Then once more, but this time with the flat of his tongue.

He's starved for him but wants to drag this out, to savor every second of having this man again, of being able to touch him, kiss him, love him the way he wants—the way Sylvain _deserves_. He's sucking tiny kisses and placing the gentlest of nibbles along his favorite purple-blue vein when all of a sudden, his world turns upside down.

"Fuck!" Felix shouts as his head hits the pillow, and Sylvain falls over top of him. He'd apparently gotten Felix in some grapple hold and flipped them with such agility that Felix hadn't even seen it coming.

Sylvain's eyes are dark and wild and he looks like he could eat Felix alive. Felix wants that, yes, he wants he wants he—

Sylvain bites him hard in the neck, and Felix's whole body convulses, jerking up into him, nerves on _fire_. He thinks for a horrifying second that maybe he's come untouched—just from _that_ , how embarrassing—but once the initial adrenaline peters out, he's relieved to find that that hasn't been the case.

"Goddess, Felix," Sylvain growls, gathering him into an embrace so tight, so chock-full with emotion, that it pushes the air out of Felix in more than just the physical sense. "That's not called seducing your husband. That's called _killing_ your husband."

"Guess we don't want that," Felix says in a breath cut short by Sylvain sucking his bottom lip into his mouth.

Then, Sylvain is everywhere. His tongue and lips and hands roam Felix's body; pouring heat in Felix's mouth, dipping his collarbones, circling his nipples. Round and round they go, wet and relentless, until Felix is near tears and shoving his hips up to meet him for friction, for anything more than this sweet torture.

Felix can shout his joy to the heavens when Sylvain cups his backside with one broad hand and slides the other under his thigh. Felix parts for him readily, knees pulled up to his chest.

"Can we keep going like this?" Sylvain traces the sensitive pucker of skin exposed to him with a careful finger, and it takes a second for Felix to get what he means. This is the point that Felix would normally roll over onto his stomach, smash his face into the pillow and let go. But there are many somethings different about tonight. It's like they're touching each other anew, seeing each anew, and when Sylvain says, "I need to see your face," Felix hears him anew.

But old habits die hard, and knee-jerk still wants him to say, _Yes, whatever, just do it_. But Felix is so tired of being _any_ type of jerk to the people he loves anymore, so he says what he means:

"Yeah," he breathes. "Yeah, I need to see you, too."

When Sylvain nudges into him with a slick finger and crooks it _just so_ , Felix sees stars. He arches his neck, feeling heat blossom all across his chest. He's so close already, on the tipping edge of exploding out of his skin, and he tells Sylvain so in needy little gasps.

"That's all right," Sylvain replies.

Another finger, and Felix is grappling at the sheets, eyes screwed shut. "No, no, I don't—" He jerks his head from side to side, trying to fill his mind with the periodic table or dirty dishes or, to hell with it, even the fact that Baby is probably staring at them from underneath the goddamn nightstand. "I don't wanna come alone."

Sylvain lets out a short laugh, an aborted sound that slams into a groan as he sinks his fingers in, down to the base knuckle. "Fuck, Felix. You're so hot."

"Please," Felix whispers. "Inside. I need you."

"Oh, Felix—"

And Felix knows that tone, knows that he's about to say something tender and sweet and admiring, which is fine, that's just who he is, and Felix was the one who started them off like this tonight. But that was more than half an hour ago, before he was reminded of what it means to really _have_ this man again, familiar as he is, and the one thought that's been cycling through Felix's mind is:

"It felt so fucking awful to wonder if I'd touch you like this ever again. If I lost you for good, I don't know what…"

Sylvain stills, his gaze laser-sharp with concentration. He lets his fingers slowly slip out.

"How am I even supposed to _think_ about touching another person if I lost you? How am I supposed to love—"

He cuts off with a muffled moan as Sylvain crushes their lips together.

"Don't," Sylvain all but growls when he pulls back. "You don't."

And that's all he says before his hands are anchored on Felix's hips and he begins to ease himself inside. The stretch, the weight, the searing heat of him; every detail of it is good—so, so fucking good—that Felix doesn't know what to do with himself but bring Sylvain's mouth down to his again and let him feel the way each breath shakes out of him.

" _Sylvain_."

"Felix, Goddess, fuck, this feels—"

"I know—"

It's insanity. It's madness. It's their pelvises yoked together, pushing and pulling with the hopeless desperation of lovers reunited after a long absence, and Felix has never wanted anything but exactly _this, this, this_. He's not ready to relinquish the fire and glory of this man bared to him, hard and soft and smooth and scarred and so very whole, but the intense pressure building inside him is not his decision.

"It's okay," Sylvain whispers, pushing back the hair framing Felix's face to press sloppy kisses all along the hairline, then over the three moles that dot his cheek. Even in the darkness, he knows exactly where to find them. "I'm right here with you."

When Felix lets go, it's a fast, frantic seism of limbs shaking apart and pleasure so intense it's unreal, and it's frightening all over again. But he clings onto Sylvain's shoulders, clawing desperately at his sweat-slick skin, until the aftershocks space out. He regains himself just in time to see Sylvain clam his eyes shut, his entire body drawing tight, and when Felix fists tight around him, his mouth falls open in a hoarse shout. He gives one, two, three thrashing strokes before he's gone.

Afterward, the night buzzes with white static.

Their ragged breathing slows, then steadies.

"You all right?" Sylvain whispers.

Felix nods. But when Sylvain begins to draw back, he stops him with legs wound tight around his hips. He can still feel Sylvain inside of him, and they are both finally home where they belong.

"Don't go. I'm not ready for it to be over."

"Sweetheart." Sylvain's voice unravels over Felix, a string of fairy lights, golden and bright in the darkness. "It'll never be over between us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for following along all this way!!! hope you've enjoyed this story! this is the last chapter before the epilogue ♥


	11. ever after.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because we are not Gautier-family nannies unwilling to venture beyond the duties of our job description, let us indulge in the ever after:

On the longest day of summer, Felix and Sylvain take a long, leisurely walk on the beach along the water's edge. The waves lap shyly at their ankles and the sun sets in parfait layers of pastel over the horizon. For a moment, Felix thinks that Annette might be right; this could be the perfect wedding venue—

—for _that_ couple over there, giggling uncontrollably as they splash each other with the sea water, suit and dress be damned.

For himself and Sylvain, the beach doesn't really mean anything.

That night after they get home, Felix flings open the back door to let out the heat. He stares out at the ten by ten square of wildflowers and peppers and green onion, remembering how it used to be just a field of weeds. So much has happened since that day he'd come home to find Sylvain crab-walking along the length of the fence, covered in sweat and dirt and still so, so gorgeous. It was Sylvain who took the first steps in turning this hideous granny house into a home for them. It's still Sylvain who makes this place home for Felix.

Sylvain deserves more for just himself, Felix decides. More than he thinks he needs.

Felix considers the scenery before him again and begins to hatch an idea.

* * *

The trip to Enbarr was a decoy.

A very enjoyable one, of course, that involved going to see Sylvain's favorite show at the Mittlefrank Opera House and hiking off the path at Morgaine Ravine. They had planned to meet up with Ingrid toward the end of the week, but she'd been oh-so-inconveniently laid up with the flu.

Ingrid is not sick.

Felix has been texting her nonstop since they got off the plane at Derdriu International to ensure that all the pieces are in place for the _real_ anniversary celebration.

As they turn onto the block where their townhouse sits, they're met with an outrageous number of cars clogging up the entire street.

"Hey, that's Lorenz's car," Sylvain points out. "And doesn't Lysithea drive a white Prius like that?"

Felix mentally kicks himself for overlooking this dead giveaway, but at least Mercedes's Let's Bake Sweet Love catering truck isn't blocking off their gravel drive. Besides, Sylvain still looks sufficiently confused and seems more concerned than suspicious when Felix refuses to say a word to him all the way up the front steps.

The five-tier cake towering in their kitchen spoils the surprise a little, but so does the arch out in the backyard where Ingrid, who is healthy as a cow, stands waiting for them...

Along with all the rest of their friends and Felix's dad.

It takes thirty very long, very awkward, seconds after the initial chorus of "Surprise!" for Sylvain to burst into hysterical laughter and just a few more for the laughter to melt away into choked sounds muffled behind his hands.

Smirking victoriously, Felix pulls him in by the waist and whispers, "Sylvain Jose Fraldarius, you are so damn pretty when you cry."

"Shut up, goddess, what the hell, Felix, _what the hell_ ," Sylvain blubbers, and Felix can't help falling a little harder for the mess of him.

Mercedes and Dimitri whisk Sylvain away to get ready on the second floor, the prep area for Groom S. Meanwhile, a very well-dressed wad of bubblegum in her stilettos clicks down the wooden planks of the center aisle, making a beeline for Felix.

"Happy wedding day, handsome," she greets with a dainty flutter of her manicured fingers.

"Hey, thanks again for coordinating, Hilda," he says, gesturing to their made-over backyard.

There are three rows of white chairs lined up neatly on either side of the center aisle. White planks tile the walkway, with pink rose petals sprinkled generously over top, but there's no "beginning" or "end" of the path demarcated by a looming altar. Instead, a simple white arch strewn with string lights stands proudly at the heart of everything.

Once upon a winter, over steaming tea in kintsukuroi cups, Sylvain had said something about meeting in the middle on their wedding day. When Felix mentioned this to Hilda in one of their top secret emails, she'd replied with only five words: _leave it up to me_ 😉 

Now, as Felix gazes up at the veiled arch, with its white gossamer curtain fluttering like eyelashes in the breeze, he can see that it was absolutely the right decision to do just that.

"Oh, I had such a blast working with Ingy getting this all together," Hilda chirps, bubbly and bright.

Ingrid pokes her head up from where she's obsessively nudging each of the white chairs infinitesimally more in line next to the others. "Did someone call for me?"

"Just telling Felix how amazing of a team we make, partner!" Hilda blows a big, exaggerated kiss with both hands in her direction.

Ingrid turns red from head to toe.

 _Goddamn lesbian extraordinaire_ , Felix thinks, glancing over to where Dream Team's significant others are sitting together, watching this exchange unfold with sparkling amusement.

The rest of the afternoon passes with Felix being yanked and dragged in so many directions he's bound to lose an arm if he doesn't lose the entourage first. When he grumps insistently at Annette and Lysithea that he needs to go shower and change, _alone_ , they put up their hands in surrender with matching expressions that seem to say, _Yikes, bridezilla…_

Felix stomps the entire way up to the top floor.

In the study, he finds all the pieces of his wedding attire laid out for him down to the socks and, fucking hell, even _underwear_ that he does not want to know who picked out. He grimaces down at his underclothes for a moment before taking them into the attached bath.

The entire time that he's in the shower, he tries not to obsess about the strip of fabric hanging next to his suit. Which means, of course, that he spends the entire time he's showering obsessing about it.

And it's right there waiting for him, when he returns. Towel draped over his shoulders, he seats himself on the desk chair and stares at the thin sash of silver and blue.

Six months ago, on the day after his big blow-out with Sylvain, his dad called back to check on him just as he'd said he would. Only, Felix hadn't expected for him to call from the boarding area at Areadbhar Local, where he awaited his flight out to Derdriu.

At Felix’s stunned silence, Rodrigue insisted that he could book a hotel, but just hadn’t yet because it was so last-minute a decision. Felix told him the spare bed would be dressed by the time he arrived.

Felix was still in the midst of frantically dad-proofing the apartment (i.e. stashing away any adult toys left out where they might be discovered) when Rodrigue arrived at the door. He'd only brought a duffel and briefcase, just enough luggage for a few days, but he could've hauled over his whole house on his back and Felix wouldn't have cared.

Because draped over his right arm was a plastic-wrapped bundle that Felix had not seen since he was thirteen.

 _You should have this_ , Rodrigue had said, and when Felix peeled back first the plastic protector sheet, then the Faerghus flag, there he was. The familiar texture of him, the phantom scent of him overwhelmed Felix's senses as he pressed his face into the nylon-cotton blend. He hugged his brother close, even though he wasn't there in these clothes anymore.

For the first time in a long time, his father was right there when Felix needed him, his hand solid and warm on his head. They didn't hug; they didn't exchange a tearful _I love you, son_ and _I love you too, dad_ , but the pressure of that steady palm belonged to the man who taught him how to grip his first sword. Glenn would never again come home, but his dad did.

Felix stands from his seat in the study, leaving his towel behind on the chair, and pads over to the metal rack where his white suit hung next to the tattered sleeve cuff he'd taken from Glenn's uniform. He tells himself that he is _not_ going to cry again, especially in front of every fucking person he knows. His vows had taken an excruciating amount of time to write, dammit, and he will get through them with _dignity_.

It's all a futile effort.

His face must look disgusting by the time Annette drops in to check on him. She wraps her arms around him and assures him that he's never looked more stunning, though after he gets his shit back together, she dabs way too much concealer on his face for that assertion to be convincing.

But he needs to do this.

To say goodbye.

He and Sylvain, they're starting over from two. Except, they aren't really just two, are they? They're two plus a cat who screams at them to cherish each other when they fight; they're two plus a father who is there for the important events in their life; they're two plus this mélange of misfits in their backyard who share not their blood but, more importantly, their joys and sorrows.

Felix is scoping out a place for these people on Wonder Wall and wondering if maybe they should start a Wonder Wall Annex. Sylvain would probably like that, to have a constant reminder of the fact that he has so much more than what he thinks he deserves.

A crisp current of wind blows in through the open window behind Felix, tickling the fine hairs on his neck that didn't make it into the braid Annette had done for him. Fingering the silver and blue fabric woven into his hair, he lets his eyes fall shut, taking a rare second just to revel in the moment.

In the background, a continuous ripple of conversation moves through the crowd spilled over their lawn. Amidst the chatter, Sylvain's laughter stands out like a splash of color, a bright blot of pink and orange that warms the air. And when the voices around him join in, adding a forgotten detail to his story, or chiming in with a joke, they blend together like they were all meant to be part of the same canvas.

A while later, Felix hears Sylvain's voice draw away from the crowd as he begins to call out for Baby. Earlier, Felix had heard him chattering about how he was going to bring her out to meet everyone. It's no surprise that Baby has chosen to go into hiding instead. Friendly as she is, she's no _dog_.

A finger taps Felix's shoulder from behind. When Felix turns, it pokes him in the cheek, and Sylvain's face is right there next to his. 

" _Fe_ ," he whispers, and it's like _autumn day_ and _slow sway_ and _forever, by your side I'll stay._

Felix feels heat creep up his neck, filing his cheeks. "Yeah?"

"I've been calling your name, sweetheart."

 _Oh_.

"I thought you were looking for Baby again."

"She's camped out under Dedue's chair."

"I see," Felix says. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a quick flash of Sylvain's suit jacket and fights the urge to turn to admire the whole of him. "What do you want? We're not supposed to see each other before the ceremony, Annie said. Bad luck or something."

"It's okay, I think we're all maxed out on that front," Sylvain says, pressing a kiss into Felix's hair. "I just love to see you turn my way." Lips trailing down past his temple, past his ear, Sylvain nuzzles against his cheek. "Promise you'll always turn to take my hand?"

"I'm about to promise you a lot more than just that," Felix says, gesturing to the yard full of wedding decorations. The golden crackles of his ring wink under the pink-threaded light of the dwindling sun. "I think I already have."

"But that, too? I'm greedy."

"You're not greedy enough, dumbass," Felix tells him, twisting around, as he finally decides to give in to the need to see him properly.

When he does, a smile explodes across his face. There is no taming it, not when Sylvain shoulders the sun across his broad back and his eyes light up so bright that his lashes almost glimmer in their glow. He is a thing of beauty, a _gift_ , wrapped in his dark maroon suit and black trousers. A black bowtie sits charmingly at the base of his throat, where Felix's mouth wants to be.

Sylvain is looking him over, too, gaze heated as it moves down over his face and neck and chest, all down the rest of his body, then back up again to meet his eyes. They share a grin.

Felix pushes up onto his tiptoes and leans out the open window, hooking Sylvain in with an arm looped around his neck. Their lips slot together perfectly, a soft press that turns more eager by the measure, and Sylvain cups his hand just under Felix's jaw, where his pulse beats the wildest.

"I promise," Felix whispers into his mouth.

Sylvain hums back a dazed, kiss-drunk note.

"I promise," Felix says again, and Sylvain kisses him deeper. "I promise, I promise, I promise—"

They're both laughing when they pull back.

Sylvain's grin is so wide it takes up the entire frame of the window. It's the only thing that Felix has eyes for anyway. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Just so we know it's forever and for good," Sylvain says, offering his hand, "do you pinky-linky swear on it?"

Felix takes his hand and joins their pinkies, giving them a firm shake before letting all the rest of their fingers thread together, too. When he looks up, he's rewarded with his favorite Sylvain smile, the one that's sun-warmed butterscotch in his eyes and pale freckles dancing the do-si-do over his cheeks. 

It's the one that makes Felix's heart soar to the sky.

"I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a story that's lived inside my heart for a matter of years now. two young, very imperfect people navigating the early years of marriage is, perhaps, one of the few things i feel qualified to write about. the thrill of belonging in someone's heart forever. the first time you use those cherished words "husband" or "wife" or, simply, "spouse". learning about each other, and more importantly, about yourself. _un_ learning those cruel habits you picked up from watching your parents sharpen their words on the person they're meant to respect and protect. relearning how to love yourself alongside someone who will never let you give up on your happiness.
> 
> i dedicate this piece to my wife, who is truly the strongest, tiniest person with the biggest heart. she inspires me to be a better person every single day.
> 
> once again, i'd like to thank ivory and emily for their help and support. i'd still be out at sea with this piece if it weren't for them both. shout-out to lois as well for all the sweet, wonderful feedback and encouragement she's given me, dating all the way back to when i first posted the prequel to this piece. and of course, i am beyond grateful to jade for choosing this story and loving this story and creating beautiful, magical pieces of art for this story. you are a superstar, and i can't imagine a better person to collaborate with on this piece than you. thank you.
> 
> finally, i'd love to hear any thoughts/feelings/???? you have about this story! i hope there was a little bit of something here for you to enjoy. until next time! ♥  
> 
> 
> [RT this fic](https://twitter.com/orgiastique/status/1294299190793842688?s=20) | [talk to me about sylvix/fe3h/cats](https://twitter.com/orgiastique) |[ jade's art!!!!!!!](https://twitter.com/pillowboat/status/1294476931543359488)


End file.
